Category Archives: Rituals, festivals, holidays

Dance Traditions

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student (University of Southern California)
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 2, 2017
Primary Language: English

For dance, like, um, when I was with the company, the night before the show, like, we’d always have sleepovers, and we’d always drink three… three strawberry Fantas each, which is really bad for you, ’cause you’re not supposed to drink soda, obviously, the night before, but we did it anyway, it was just like a good luck thing.

 

Thoughts:

This good-luck tradition reverses something that it supposed to be discouraged and taboo and turns it into a ritual for luck. It shows the dancers’ and teenagers’ in general tendency to bend or break rules. Additionally, because my informant is a highly trained and very talented competitive dancer, it could speak to her and her teammates’ confidence that they will be able to perform their best regardless of drinking soda the night before a performance. The context of this tradition within a sleepover works to build a community and bond with the entire team, since they are spending the whole night before a performance (and presumably the entire day of the performance) with each other and participating in the same rule-breaking rituals.

Christmas Eve Traditions

Nationality: Mexico
Age: 19
Occupation: Student (University of Southern California)
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 1, 2017
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

In my family, we… always go to Christmas Eve together. We go to mass together at… seven or eight p.m. We always sit in the… left… front left of the church, um, after we go and see, uh… like, the floats that people make for Christmas, and they’re decorated with, like, Christmas lights and nativity scenes and scenes from the Bible, and there’s, like, kids and adults dressed up, um… with costumes from… Biblical characters, and then after that’s done… um… we go back to my grandma’s house at like ten p.m. Um, and before dinner, we gather around the nativity scene that’s in my grandma’s… uh… like, behind the front door… and we sing to baby Jesus, then we pray, we do a little reflection of the day, then we kinda go around and say things that we’re thankful for that year, um… like, how we were blessed that year. Uh… then we do, like, an Our Father together and hold hands, then we do, like, a closing, um, song. And then before we put baby Jesus in the manger, we give a kiss, and put in the manger, and then we go into the big dining room… where… uh, my grandma’s already, you know, set up the table, and we always have turkey on Christmas Eve with… like, the turkey’s made with red wine… and we have, like, a fruit salad that my grandma makes, it’s homemade, and… uh, sometimes the dessert, uh… like, an original recipe that she has for a… like, a chocolate cake… and after we’re done with dinner, we usually play games or go to sleep if we’re really tired.

 

Background (from interviewer):

My informant is from Morelia, Mexico, and comes from a very conservative Catholic family. She is very close with her family, and returns to Morelia to visit them at least twice a year. She is also deeply religious and is very involved with the Catholic Center at USC.

 

Thoughts:

The repetition and specificity of these rituals show my informant’s and her family’s commitment to routine and her traditional background. They also emphasize her devotion to Catholicism and the religiosity of the holiday, and strengthen her bonds with her hometown and her family, since they do this all together as a family, gather at their grandmother’s home, and eat the same kind of homemade meal every year.

Multilingual Birthday Songs

Nationality: Mexico
Age: 48
Residence: Minnesota
Performance Date: April 2, 2017
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

(Interviewer’s additions are in italics.)

Well, since my wife is from Hong Kong… a lot of times at birthdays, family birthdays… because, back when we lived in Mexico, for birthdays, we’d sing “Happy Birthday” in Spanish… well, we’d sing “Las Mañanitas,” which is a Spanish birthday song… uh, but then we’d also sing “Happy Birthday” in Cantonese. [In traditional Chinese characters: 醒你生日快樂 ; pronounced in Cantonese, according to my informant’s wife, as “sing nei sung yuc fa lok.”] But since my wife was the only one who spoke Cantonese, we… we couldn’t get the words right, and to some of us it sounded like [to the tune of “Happy Birthday”], “La lasagna falló, la lasagna falló, la lasagna falló, la lasagna falló.” Which… in English, it means, “The lasagna failed.” And… it was just really funny, it made all our Mexican family laugh, it made the kids laugh… and so that’s how we always sang it… And we kept singing it this way until my sons started taking Chinese [Mandarin] classes in school… uh, we moved to Minnesota and they took Chinese [Mandarin] in school, Chinese immersion… and so they learned the Chinese [Mandarin] words to “Happy Birthday” [in simplified Chinese characters: 祝你生日快乐 ; pronounced in Mandarin as “zhu ni sheng ri kuai le”]… and for a while, we had them sing the Chinese [Mandarin] version of it… but then they, uh, they didn’t want to anymore… and now we usually just sing it in English, and… uh… and we still sing “Las Mañanitas” as well, but not any of the Chinese versions of it.

 

Thoughts:

The inclusion of a Cantonese version of “Happy Birthday” at this family’s birthday parties reveals my informant and his family to value multiculturalism and want to include this part of his wife’s culture into their celebrations. Yet, the warping of the lyrics also shows the overpowering of the majority culture/language (Spanish, and its misunderstanding of the Cantonese lyrics) taking precedence over the minority culture/language (Cantonese), and the appropriation and ultimate replacement of this minority language for humorous purposes.

The Running of the Teachers

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student (University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire)
Residence: Minnesota, Wisconsin
Performance Date: April 2, 2017
Primary Language: English

(In informant’s description of the tradition, “you” refers to the interviewer. Informant’s actions are in italicized parentheses.)

Well, me and you started the whole “running of the teachers” thing… where, like, right before parent-teacher conferences, we’d just sit outside the Writing Center and watch all the teachers go down to, like, the gym or the cafeteria, wheeling their little spinny chairs down the hall. And, yeah, just every time there were conferences after school, we’d be there, like, yelling words of encouragement to the teachers and, like, making tunnels for them and stuff. And then by the spring conferences junior year, it spread so the teachers knew about it, right? Like, your history teacher came up to us and asked us about it, so that was cool. And then senior year, all the teachers knew about it, like, one of the new English teachers asked us if we were going to do the running of the teachers the day of the fall conferences. Yeah, and then that year we, like, expanded it to also making care packages for some of the English teachers… with, like, tissues and hand sanitizer and candy and personalized water bottles… (laughs) yeah, they really appreciated that. ’Cause before, like junior year, we just, like, stalked one of the teachers to her table and made her signs and stuff… and she was kind of mad, but, no, she laughed. But, yeah, senior year, we, like, made them care packages and we finally got to wheel down one of the teachers in a spinny chair, and that was awesome. And then your, like, AP Euro teacher or something, right, she was really sad that we wouldn’t be there to do running of the teachers this year? Yeah, so I guess we started, like, a thing that spread to all the teachers.

 

Background (from interviewer):

My informant is a good friend from high school, and a fellow “English nerd.” She was very close with many teachers, particularly English teachers and those who ran the Writing Center. She is a talented writer, and is now an English Education major at her university. She and I used to regularly stay after school and work in the Writing Center, which allowed us to bond with many of the teachers and witness (and later take part in) their preparations for parent-teacher conferences.

 

Thoughts:

This tradition indicates my informant’s (and my) bond with our teachers and desire for them to like us. My informant, especially, as an aspiring teacher and fellow “teacher’s pet,” found it important to show her appreciation for her teachers, and liked to form friendships with them. This is evident in the friendliness and care that out tradition showed for our teachers, and in the casual conversations in which they would let us know that they knew (and looked forward to) our tradition.

Pep Rallies

Nationality: American
Age: Unknown (late 20s or early 30s)
Occupation: Writing Instructor at USC
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 19, 2017
Primary Language: English

When my dad got out of the army, he, uh… we moved to Arkansas. So I was probably, like, ten or eleven, um… And so then I’m, like, I became one of them, right? And, uh… going to pep rallies was, like, a new thing… for me, um… All the schools that I’d gone to, I lived in, like, Washington state, Colorado, and… they didn’t really have pep rallies. I don’t know, maybe they did in high school, but I… I wasn’t aware of them. Anyway, I remember going into this gym and, um… you know, the cheerleaders are cheering, and the football team is, like, running around, the band’s playing, and then everyone was, like, clapping, and then making this sound, like, “Woooooo!” And I was, like, I cannot make that sound, like… I was, like, trying, and I’d be going like, “Uhhh! Weeeaaah! Aaagghhh!” you know, like that. And then, as everyone was screaming, I would, like, try it out to see how to make that “wooo” sound… Anyway, so that was just, like, trying to, like, figure out how to be normal at a pep rally.

 

Thoughts:
My informant is a self-described “librarian type”– she is very bookish (she studies Shakespeare and is a writing instructor) and sort of introverted. Thus, the wild screaming and cheering and overall rowdy atmosphere of pep rallies, particularly in a place to which she was new at the time, seemed very strange and out-of-character for her. This story also points to the culture of pressure to fit in or “be normal” in society generally, and especially in high school. This almost forced community gathering and vocalizing of loyalty or excitement for one’s school somewhat institutionalizes this practice, and marks my informant as an outsider who is new and unfamiliar with the expectations of how to show support for her school identity.