Category Archives: Rituals, festivals, holidays

The Story Behind Chinese Valentine’s Day

Nationality: Arab American
Age: 22
Occupation: Law student
Residence: Silver Spring, MD
Performance Date: April 22, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Arabic, Turkish

The story is as follows: On the 7th Day of the 7th Lunar Year, two lovers, who can only see each other on that day (once a year), meet through the help of magpie pigeons. The pigeons form a bridge across the skies, heavens, and earth to enable the man and woman to meet and spend the day together in-love. The woman lived in the heavens and the man was a cowherd. They could only meet once a year because the woman’s father, an emperor, did not approve of the relationship. Magpies made it possible for them to meet once a year, a condition that the emperor father agreed to. Legend has it that you don’t see magpies in China on this day because they would be too busy building, or acting, as the bridge between the emperor’s daughter and the cowherd.

Background information: “I heard this story while I was in Beijing. It interested me because I heard the story during the actual Chinese Valentine’s Day itself, and I saw quite a few couples on the streets that day (more so than on Valentine’s Day anywhere else). My Chinese colleagues teased with me and asked if I had a girlfriend to go on a date with in China, and whether or not she was Chinese. It was a fun day with lots of learning and lots of laughs.

“At that day’s evening, my Chinese teacher, named Boya Lin, shared the story with me and my classmates. It was by far one of the most entrancing and beautiful tales I had ever listened to, though it might be thanks to Boya’s great storytelling skills.”

Context: The informant told me this story in a conversation about folklore.

Thoughts: It is interesting to see a story that connects to a legend – two categories of folklore helping to create one piece of folklore. It is a sad, romantic story, one of two lovers who cannot be together all the time due to parental interference. I especially like how it connects itself to the present with the legend about the magpies.

Circassian Wedding Tradition

Nationality: Syrian
Age: 40
Performance Date: April 13, 2017
Primary Language: Arabic
Language: English

From the old days to now, the Circassian community has had no strict segregation rules between the sexes, therefore both sides have the freedom to choose their spouses. Usually, the young man, with a group of trusted friends, abducts his wife-to-be from her parents house on a set date and time. The bride needs to be taken to a trusted family where the groom can’t see her until the elders contact her family and get their approval to the marriage. This custom is acceptable between the Circassians because it’s based on the agreement between the young couple. The wife-to-be consents to this arrangement.

Background information: This is a tradition in the informant’s culture (Circassian culture).

Context: The informant told me about this tradition in a conversation about folklore.

Thoughts: This personally struck me as quite strange at first. I was confused about the “abduction” part of this tradition, since I thought that the woman in the scenario has no idea what’s going to happen. But upon being told that she has a role in this arrangement, and that she has consented to the process, I felt better about it. This seems to be a way of asking permission from her parents; it is merely a ritual to be performed before the wedding, and it is apparently a very common process among Circassian people.

Passover Seder Meals

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 78
Occupation: Psychiatrist
Residence: Mexico City
Performance Date: 03/16/2017
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: Hebrew

Main Piece: Everything we eat in Pesach has a special meaning behind it. We eat an egg, a lamb bone, bitter vegetable herbs and fruits and nuts, all because it reminds of the deeds of good Moshe. The lamb represents the sacrifice of a goat that was offered at the Holy Temple, for which Moshe was responsible. The fruits and nuts are the mortar that our people used to build storage houses for Pharaoh. The egg, which is hard boiled, was eaten on the first Pesach Seder that took place in the Holy Temple after the sacrifice. We also sacrificed a chicken for the Lord, and ate the egg it laid behind to remind ourselves of our connection to Him. Finally, there’s the matza, the most important of all the meals. Bread with no yeast. The meal of our people for 40 years in the desert. When we eat it, we are reminded of the suffering and dedication of Moshe and the slaves that gave the Holy Land back to us. At the end of the night, we have a little game where the elders hide the matza in some place of the house and the children look for it. Whoever finds it first gets money from the grandparents, and they get to eat it. I don’t know if it has a deeper meaning behind it, but it was my way of keeping the children up for the entire thing. It’s very important to me that they celebrate the Seder with us and understand their history through our food and traditions.

Background information about the piece by the informant: Ethel is the matriarch of a Jewish family in Mexico City and always organizes the Seder dinners in her house. As she said, they are very important to her, as her grandchildren learn about their cultural history through it.

Context about the piece: Pesach, or Passover, celebrates the Biblical event in which Moses freed the Hebrew people from the slavery of Egypt. According to the Torah, they wandered 40 years in the desert before arriving to Canaan, or Israel, to build their Holy Temple.

Thoughts about the piece: Like many other Jewish festivities, it is celebrated and remembered through food. This goes on to show that the Jewish culinary tradition is not simply based on the ingredients available to the culture, but is rather strongly tied to the significance of their traditions. The game of the mazta in the end gives an interactive aspect to the Seder, which involves the younger participants of the ritual and draws in the younger generations to continue the tradition.

 

Kolobok: The Little Round Bun

Nationality: American
Age: 26
Occupation: Student
Residence: Tumbridge, Vermont
Performance Date: 04/19/2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Russian

Main piece: Once upon a time there was an old man and an old housewife. The man demanded his wife to make him a bun from the flour box. And so, she swept out the bin and made some dough in the shape of a little round bun. She put in the oven for it to bake and then next to the window for it to cool. The bun jumped out the window and rolled along the road until he met with a Rabbit coming towards him. The Rabbit told him “I’m going to eat you little bun”, and in response the the bun sang him a song:

“I was scraped from the flour-box
And swept from the bin
And baked in the oven
And cooled on the sill.
I ran away from Grandpa,
I ran away from Grandma,
And I’ll run away from you, this minute I will!”

So the bun rolled away, until he saw a wolf coming at him. The wolf told him “I’m going to eat you little bun”, and so he sang again:

“I was scraped from the flour-box
And swept from the bin
And baked in the oven
And cooled on the sill.
I ran away from Grandpa,
I ran away from Grandma,
And I’ll run away from you, this minute I will!”

So the bun rolled away, until he met with a fox in front of him. The fox told him “I’m going to eat you little bun”, and so he sang to the fox:

“I was scraped from the flour-box
And swept from the bin
And baked in the oven
And cooled on the sill.
I ran away from Grandpa,
I ran away from Grandma,
And I’ll run away from you, this minute I will!”

The fox told him “Sing some more, please don’t stop! Hop onto my mouth so I can hear you better”. And so the bun jumped into the fox’s mouth and sang:

“I was scraped from the flour-box
And swept from the bin-

But before he could go on the fox closed his mouth and he gobbled up the little bun.

Background information about the piece by the informant: William Murawski is an American from Polish and Russian decent. His grandparents from Russia used to tell him tales and nursery rhymes from their hometown as a child. William is an aficionado of Russian folk tales and likes to tell preform them the same way as his grandparents performed them for him when he was a child.

Context on the performance: The tale is usually told to children. The song sang by the bun is told with a melody, which is why it is easy to remember verbatim.

Thoughts on piece: The seems more nonsensical than classic western European tales, as they usually have anthropomorphic animals, but rarely a simple object like a bun acting with human characteristics. The resolution of the story is also anti-climatic and dower, but it does provide children with a lesson, which is that one must not be overconfident on a victory like the bun did in the end, as well as the power of wit, as the fox showed. This shows that Russian folk tales are concerned with providing life lessons rather than having feel-good endings.

Marina’s La Llorona

Nationality: Colombian
Age: 71
Occupation: retired
Residence: Glendora, California
Performance Date: 3/14/2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

My Grand Aunt Marina, my grandfathers sister, swears the following legend of “La Llorona” is absolutely true. She knows there have been other stories about La LLorona but hers is the “god’s honest truth”, the real story. She told it on Good Friday at a dinner at my grandmother house

When they would go out to the country for a family camping weekend near the Magdalena River, my aunt said “that on nights with a full moon if you went to the river at dusk or dawn you were sure to see a Llorona/The Crying Woman. She tells me that a young woman drowned her own children in the river because her husband did not care for them and had abandoned them for younger woman (Marina rolls her eyes at this point of the story and murmurs “typical”).  Marina continues but more feeling her voice… “no matter how hard she tried to forget her husband, he had left them without any money and had taken all of their meager belongings. She tried to find work but with four young children to take care of, it proved to be impossible and in a moment of desperation after hearing her children cry all night from hunger, she drowned her children at dawn, letting the river take away their bodies downstream and when she saw her child were no longer with her she cried out in grief and after no longer able to bear the pain she kills herself. St. Peter finds her at the gates of heaven and deems her unworthy for purgatory or even hell because of the gravity of her sins and was sent back down to earth and to find her children. For this reason she roams around at dusk and dawn, crying as she looks for them.”  Marina assures me that she had heard La Llorona on many occasions down by the Magdalena River but only saw her once. This is where Marina gets super serious and lowers her voice to almost a whisper… “One early morning she woke up and saw it was only dawn, she tried really hard to hold back her need to go to the bathroom but was unable. She thought if she was quick enough nothing bad would happen but on the way back to the campsite through the misty dawn she saw a woman wearing rags down by the river crying. She says she felt her blood run cold and ran to the campsite arriving in a cold sweat!” Seeing La Llorona is considered a bad omen and Marina says she was inconsolable all day, finally the family headed home that day to find that grandmother Celestina had passed away. She never went camping to the river again. Marina finishes the story with tears in her eyes because she says that she felt some kind of responsibility for Celetistina death. My Abuelo thinks this is absurd mainly because Celestina was very old and lucky to have survived as long as she did. He cannot collaborate his sister’s story because he was already living in the U.S. but Marina swears it is the God’s honest truth “te juro ha dios” and she is very Catholic. My Abuelo said he did have a dream where his grandmother Celestina talked to him at length, telling him all that was to come in his life, the night before she past away.

Analysis: Although there are some aspects of the supernatural and personal loss, overall I found the story very melancholy and haunting. The way she spoke of La Llorona made me believe that she believed what she had experienced was true. She was so upset during the retelling, she had to get up and leave to the restroom, when she came out she was dabbing her eyes and refuse to tell me any more stories. I feel fortunate to have been allowed to have such a personal retelling.