Category Archives: Rituals, festivals, holidays

Bulgarian Name Day

Nationality: Bulgarian
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Chicagp
Performance Date: 4/3/16
Primary Language: English
Language: Bulgarian
The informant is a 20 year old male who moved from Bulgaria to Chicago as a child. He tells me about a name day tradition that he continues to celebrate even living in the US, and how he feels it’s an important part of his culture and life.
Name day is a celebration for your name and is celebrated just like a birthday. Mine is January 7th because it correlated with my name. Name days comes from the Orthodox Christian religion and its saints. The Orthodox calendar is full of days devoted to different saints. In the past, when Christianity was establishing itself as a main religion in Bulgaria, people began giving their children the same names as the saints from this calendar. People believed that the child named after a certain saint will be looked after and blessed by him/her. Over time, people started celebrating the day kind of like a birthday!I learned about it through my family and it has been a tradition to celebrate it every year, even though we have stopped following many other traditions since we moved from Bulgaria to the US. My family celebrates it by giving decently small gifts or money to the person who’s name were celebrating, and in return the person either buys cake or prepares dinner. Other families go out to restaurants or bars but my family prefers to keep it intimate. Not every name has a date for celebration, only certain common slavic names like mine; Ivan. Celebrating means a lot to my family and we continue to do it every year because it makes us proud to follow traditions from the country were from (Bulgaria).
ANALYSIS:
The informant spoke about these name days as if it were a second birthday. He explained that as a kid he would look forward to it just as much as he would his actual birthday and received gifts and attention all the same. I found this piece interesting because I have really never heard of people having a special day like this each year besides a birthday. It is very common for people to celebrate different days and occasions of coming of age, but this seems to be considered just as important as a birthday each year. I also think that having a whole day dedicated to you because of your name might offer an extra sense of pride and connection for people to their names.

Sephardic Rosh Hashanah Sedar

Nationality: American
Age: 46
Occupation: Rabbi
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/15/16
Primary Language: English
Language: Hebrew

The informant is Rabbi, working at a temple based in Los Angeles. She explains her religious journey and how meeting her husband and learning his own practices made an impact both on her life and religious beliefs and traditions.

  • So my husband is Sephardic, and so we have this whole ritual around the New Year that has all of these symbolic foods, and is something that without the ceremony is kind of, our Jewish New Year wouldn’t really have the same feeling to it.
  • So, I grew up in a pretty reform family in Cincinnati Ohio, and we were observant but not really I wouldn’t say very ritually bound; we didn’t keep kosher, we didn’t observe a lot o the Jewish commandments, but one thing that was really important to my family was Shabbat and the Jewish holidays. So I was always really into Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and Purim and all of that stuff. And when I was a young adult living in Israel, and I started seeing the man who has become my husband, he comes from a Sephardic background. So something that was so interesting was that I had been celebrating holidays in a certain pretty much my, my whole life and never really considered that there were different way of embracing Judaism because in Cincinnati we were just really not so exposed to other types of Judaism. So when I met my husband, actually the first time that I spent time with his family was on the Jewish New Year, on the first night of Rosh Hashanah and before we had our big New Years meal, there was a ceremony and symbolic foods that were set up all around the table and um I had never heard of it before, I had never experienced it before, so I was full of a lot of questions. Basically what I learned about the whole Sephardic tradition of having a Sedar for Rosh Hashanah is that they are very into the symbolic nature of food. So you have the saying ‘you are what you eat’ um and in the Jewish sense, the symbolic foods, you ingest the types of blessings and the types of direction you want your New Year to take. So some of the items that would be eaten traditionally would be carrots… like a, a carrot and the blessing over it would be that God should ordain for us a good judgment in the year to come, and you eat the carrot and the word is Gevurah or geburah (גבורה) which is the same word as judgment, so its like you’re ingesting a good judgment. There is the apples dipped in honey and thats so that you have a sweet and a happy New Year. You eat pomegranates and the blessing for that is that you should be as multitudinous in your acts of kindness and mitzvoth as many as there are seeds in the pomegranate. One of the weirdest blessings that kind of… that took me a while to wrap my head around literally is that there is a… a hope that we should be at the head of the year and not at the tail, so there is a goats head *laughs* that is a part of the Sedar, and in my husbands family they took that really really literally and at the time, I was a vegetarian *laughs again* so on the table was this like… you know this like overcooked goats head and they served the tongue and my hebrew was not very good at the time and my husband, well he wasn’t my husband at the time, said well you know its just a little muscle and you have to eat it so that the blessing is that we will be at the head of the year and not at the tail… and that was kind of my first experience with the Sephardic Sedar and I think that as I continued to grow in my own Jewish practice and really kind of learn more about the non Ashkenazic but Sephardic traditions I find them to be umm… much more ritualistic and much more superstitious and much more concerned with having your house in a certain order and having certain foods that show that your intentions for this Jewish rituals are really of a very evolved kind of commitment. And the Sedar around Rosh Hashanah, every time that we have it now, we  have different blessings that we’ve folded in and my boys, they certainly know all the traditional ones, but every once in awhile we’ll come up with some new blessings like uhh… last year my kids added celery with raisins so that everyone who ate it would have a ‘raise-in’ their salary and that was something that they thought was really cute, and it actually went over pretty well. But when put around the table with apples and honey, and pomegranates, and we don’t do a lambs head because that’s where I draw the line, we do a fish head, and I’m, I’m, okay with that, it’s a little bit of a you know a shift in the tradition, but knowing that his parents still have the goats head on the table, I’m good just knowing that someone out there has a goats head on their table and they are perhaps thinking about us. Its pretty umm, for me, especially as I grow older and as my kids grow older, its a really nice tradition, so I think that for them, knowing that we’re doing it, that their grandparents did it and are doing it, that their aunts and uncles are doing it, that so many other people in the world are putting this good energy into the world for a New Year thats full of blessings and full of all good things, makes them feel really connected and really proud of their Jewish practice.
  • Yeah and I started keeping kosher when I was in graduate school, actually when I was living in India umm and so for me it was kind of more my own personal and Jewish evolution. I think that when I knew that I was going to become a Rabbi, I kind of wanted to have more experience with Judaism but it was so meaningful for me that a lot of it stuck. So fortunately my family has been lovely and embracing and enthusiastic about the way we live our lives and they’re pretty committed Jews themselves so yeah it works out pretty nicely. 

ANALYSIS:

Occasionally when people are married, they adopt their loved one’s religion, traditions, beliefs or customs. I found this piece particularly interesting because upon becoming closer to her significant other, the informant was able to learn and expand on her knowledge of her own religion. I also found it intriguing that they were able to take his customs and transform them within their family to create their own new traditions.

Dartmouth Night

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/15/16
Primary Language: English

The informant is a 20 year old student who is currently studying at Dartmouth. He recounts his experience with this initiation tradition and how it made him already feel a part of something.

  • So during homecoming weekend at Dartmouth, there is a Dartmouth tradition that tons of alumni come back to campus and are welcomed back into the frats- and each class builds its own bonfire structure, so my class, being a freshman would be 19, and the number of the year you graduate is placed on the top of the structure ( the structure is made out of wood and it is 50 feet high) I didn’t personally participate in making it but my class did. Then on the night of the bonfire, the entire freshman class starts at one dorm and moves through the campus picking up other freshman from each dorm building and eventually making their way to the green, which is where the bonfire getting ready to be lit. Then the freshman are welcomed into an inner circle around which all the other classes and alumni are standing and chanting. The bonfire is lit by select freshman, those who built it, and the freshman class begins to run around the bonfire the number of laps of their graduating year- meanwhile, all the surrounding upper-classmen heckle the freshman to run across the inner circle and touch the fire (which is completely guarded by Hanover police and security because its technically considered trespassing). Eventually, someone finally breaks free of the lap running and tries to touch the fire instigating others to do the same. Literally the police tackle people. This has been a tradition for a really long time, President William Jewett Tucker introduced the ceremony of Dartmouth Night in 1895
  • me: so what is the significance of touching the fire?
  • If you are caught then you are brought to the police station and the understanding is that an alumni will bail you out of jail, but if you’re not caught, you are seen as a legend from your fellow classmates and the older kids.
  • I first heard about this tradition from a sophomore, who touched the fire himself, and was clearly still prideful of that, it was within the first couple of weeks of school.
  • I actually did an interview about this in the school paper, but touching the fire for me provided the best welcome possible into dartmouth and solidified the fact that this is a good place for me.

ANALYSIS:

I think that initiations can be really important for anyone in-group. In my opinion they immediately create a sense of community and a feeling of belonging which is so important for a group to stay strong and connected.

Chinese Weddings

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: He goes to school here at USC in LA but is from Shanghai.
Performance Date: April 23, 2016
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

“There were many Chinese girls that didn’t have sex before the wedding and on the wedding night old people like men and superior persons in the family put like a kind of like close in like a white close in on the back and so for the woman’s first time there’s some kind of bloody thing on the cloth and you know and some people make it like the handkerchief so it has that nice red thing on the clothing. This clothing is made like a handkerchief thing so it stains. It’s very popular in asian culture. It’s a long time ago. They don’t do that today. Very Asian thing.”

2. My friend achieved this knowledge just by growing up in the culture. He doesn’t remember anyone really telling him anything. He did say that he hasn’t been to a wedding like this because no one really does it like this anymore.

3. The context of this story is my friend’s dorm room. I practically just walked in and asked him if he could let me record him saying some folklore. This piece was mentioned when I asked him to divert from tales and go into traditions a little bit more.

4. He tended to believe that this was generalized to the Chinese people. However, I’ve recognized that this practice, although with multiplicity and variation, throughout the entirety of the globe. For example, I know that in ancient Hebrew culture wedding ceremonies were quite similar. They would consummate the marriage at the wedding and toss a bloody rag over a curtain. These practices have obviously evolved over time and the view of sex has as well. Because of this, the Chinese practices have changed, but according to my friend, the Chinese still value waiting for marriage to have sex very highly. In that sense, these old customs still influence the current day.

Korean Wedding

Nationality: South Korean
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: He goes to school here in LA but is from South Korea.
Performance Date: April 23, 2016
Primary Language: English
Language: Korean

Description: “This is based on what my parents did, cause they did partly western and partly eastern. The ceremony was held the normal way but the proposal was… the ceremony was held the western way… cause how long was it? It was like 1990 or something. So yeah. But the proposal was actually kind of traditional style in the sense that uh. So when you ask the daughter’s hand in marriage you don’t do it. Your friend does. As with most societies Korea was very patriarchal. So the son comes and then the father has to kinda sell his daughter essentially and the dad has to act like he needs to be paid a lot or something like that. And so there’s this back and forth going on between who is essentially the best man and the dad going like I’ll pay you this much and then the dad saying nah, nah. It just goes back and forth. And then.. Oh wait no… how much the… oh wait no… how much the husband’s family will by the daughter for. That was it. My bad. Like the father of the wife would go oh she’s worth this much. And the best man would go nah nah that’s waaaay too much. And then while that’s going on the to be husband is hiding back in the background watching. Well he’s not supposed to see but… you always kind of do that. Apparently that’s what my dad did. He kinda saw from the background. I heard this pretty recently too so I was pretty surprised. People don’t really do that anymore. They’re more western. And then eventually the son shows up with the mount and then they take the wife and they just get married. There’s a ceremony. I guess in Korean weddings they still dress up in traditional clothes and they sit together in like this mini altar kind of things. They just kind of eat and then take photos. But in the past it would be like that the entire time. There’d be celebration depending on how wealthy you are. If you’re rich it’d be pretty big, if you’re a commoner probably not as big. But, eh. The traditional clothing is hanbok. It’s like a dress for the most part. The guy also wears hanbok. It’s just traditional clothes. There’s normal ones and then there’s fancy ones. Although nowadays people only wear the fancy ones. Though, normal clothes make more sense. But it’s actually surprisingly comfortable it’s just a lot of layers. I’ve worn one as a kid before during special holidays. There’s winter ones and summer ones. The summer ones are very thin… like pretty thin. The winter ones are thicker and there are multiple layers.”

2. My friend got this story from listening to his parents proposal story. They experienced this tradition on a first hand account and then told him about the practice as he was growing up.

3. I walked into his dorm room and asked him if he could tell me some Korean folklore. He had so much and was able to dish it out really quickly.

4. There’s a lot of things you can take away from this. It’s easy to tell that these traditions find themselves in a more patriarchal system. In America, it would be considered outrageous if you had to pay for your bride. Still, on the other hand, many other cultures still do this as well. It’s a fairly common practice in other cultures. Still, there are specifics here that make this very Korean. First of all, the fact that you just find a friend to go barter for a wife for you is interesting. This gives insight into Korea’s belief system on trust. They obviously keep their friends close and give them power to influence their lives and their pocketbooks.