Category Archives: Rituals, festivals, holidays

Feast of the 7 Fishes

Nationality: american
Age: 60
Occupation: teacher
Residence: denver
Performance Date: 4/18/15
Primary Language: English

Feast of the seven fishes is a traditional Italian meal made on Christmas Eve:

MG: “I learned about it from your Dad’s dad. They did it back in New Jersey and we tried to bring it in Colorado. Technically it’s the “feast of the seven fishes” and you’re supposed to have seven fish dishes, but we made some adaptations. Some of the dishes are real traditional. One was salted cod cause salted cod doesn’t go bad when you don’t refrigerate it. Pretty much every ancient civilization had a cod dish cause it didn’t go bad, it smells really bad though. So your grandpa would salt it for awhile and soak it in water and it’s revived and you can cook it. We also had roasted smelt and pickled herring, but no one liked it in Colorado. We had to get the cod flown in too. Back in New Jersey your grandpa would just go to the Italian deli but they don’t have those in Colorado really. We decided it was too much work when the only one who ate it was your dad. Your grandpa taught me how to make the dishes when I would go over when I was still in high school. He would be cooking for days, he would do everything himself. Me and you dad split the work for our version”

How did you change the traditional meal?

MG: “Well we added food for the people who don’t eat seafood. We added ham, eggplant parmesan and baked stuffed shells. But we still try to have seven types of fish, usually raw clams, baked stuffed clams, shimp momma leoni, lobster, king crab, scallops, green lip mussels and blake mussels.”

Who do you invite over for dinner?

MG:”Just family friends and family usually. We try to invite a lot of people because we make so much food. When your grandpa would do it they would invite all their friends, it was like a big party. It’s supposed to have a religious meaning but it was just a big party for their family so that’s what we try to do. It’s not religious at all. A lot of jews end up being there actually cause they don’t have anywhere to be on Christmas Eve”

This was a good example of how traditions can mobilize and adapt to new areas. Additionally, the fact that there was originally a religious connotation but the event could be celebrated without any religious aspect was interesting.

Dia de las Velitas

Nationality: Bogota, Colombia
Age: 21
Occupation: student
Residence: USA
Performance Date: April 22, 2015
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

My Informant was a 21 year old female who moved to the United States from Bogota, Colombia in 2004. She lives five houses down on my street.

Tradition:

On December 7th we celebrate this event called “Dia de la Velitas”, which is the start of the holiday season. What my family does is, we wait until it’s night time, then we each get a candle. As we light the candle, we make a wish and then set all of the candles on this plate, on the top part. We set the plate on the driveway, so it’s slanted down and then we just wait. We hang around and talk and watch the candles burning. I’m not sure if this is part of the regular tradition, but we play a sort of game with the wax. We wait until the candle wax starts to melt and run down the plate and the first candle to have its wax reach the bottom of its plate gets the wish. I mean, who’s candle that is has their wish come true. We make a fun night out of it, we make empanadas and drink soda and just mess around.

Collector: Has your family tradition changed at all since you moved here from Colombia?

Informant: Well, my family hasn’t, but it’s not the same.

Collector: How so?

Informant: In Colombia everyone participates, and I mean everyone. You see candles all over the city. People line the streets with them and some hang lanterns. Here, my family is the only one on our street who does it… we might even be the only people to do it for miles.

Collector: What does “Dia de las Velitas” translate to?

Informant: Day of the Candles.

Cultural traditions vary depending on location and contribute to the ethnic identities of people. As seen here, although my informant has moved away from the area where the traditional practice generally occurs, she and her family continue to perform according to their ethnic identity.

Chinese New Year

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: student
Residence: los angeles
Performance Date: 4/25/15
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin

The informant, RD, describes the dishes and gatherinings her family partakes in for Chinese New Year:

RD: “So there was four main dishes that we made every year. The first was dumplings with one single peanut inside. Not every dumpling had a peanut inside so the people who got the peanut dumplings were the lucky ones who were supposed to have a good year. The next dish was a sticky rice with different kinds of fruit which you’d lay out on the new year. Well you made two, so one for you to eat and then one for the gods. It shows that gods that you are giving back and lets you pray for a year of hope and prosperity. And the other two dishes I don’t know how to explain in english (laughs), yeah I have no idea how to explain them. Oh but there was a lot of fish and meat because it was supposed to be, like, extravagant. People would pull out all the stops.

Who would make all the dishes?

RD: When it was at my house my mom and dad would make all the food, but it would switch between households every year. Like some years we’d go to my parents friends house and then other times all their friends would come over.

Was it mainly friends who came?

RD: “Yeah it was my parents friends and then we could invite our friends too. There wasn’t very many family members there because most of my parents relatives were still back in China. There was also a red bag tradition that we did every year where each child child would get a little red bag from there parents with money in it, like 100-500 dollars”

Was the money just a present?

RD: “It was supposed to recognize the child for having a great year, like it showed how proud your family was and how much you accomplished during the year.”

I thought the dishes they made for Chinese New Year were very interesting especially the dumpling with the peanut in it. It seems similar to many other food traditions, like when someone finds the baby figurine in the cake during Mardi Gras. It seems to be a common theme of people being lucky when they find something special in their food. This feeds a lot into the power of superstition on people’s beliefs.

I also thought the red bag was interesting because it signifies the pride of the parents. I though that was a unique way of receiving a gift. Unlike Christmas where you are granted gifts, I thought it was interesting that the children earn the money by being successful and sources of pride for their families.

Cabbage Night

Nationality: american
Age: 60
Occupation: accountant
Residence: denver, colorado
Performance Date: 4/21/15
Primary Language: English

What is cabbage night?

RG: “It’s the night before Halloween. Some people called it mischief night, but we always called it cabbage night. But it was basically a mischief night, you’d throw toilet paper at houses and throw eggs and people would write in shaving cream in people’s driveways. It was really fun and just really counterproductive. People you didn’t like  you would egg their house, we had egg fights, put shaving cream on people”

Would you go out with your friends?

RG: “You would go out in packs. Packs of your friends, I was with all guys but girls did it too. And then the police would chase us around, I got caught by the cops a couple times and they put all the eggs in my pockets and hit you with your night stick and the eggs would crack in your pockets. That happened to me a couple times”

Would you target certain people?

RG: “Oh ya. If you had someone crazy in your neighborhood you’d go after them, there was specific targets you’d go after. There was a lady who lived around the corner from us who called the cops on us all the time because she was obsessed with her lawn”

“Cabbage night” was interesting because it was similar to Halloween in that it was acceptable to do things you normally couldn’t do. Just as on Halloween you were supposed to take strangers from candy, which you normally couldn’t do, cabbage night encouraged mischievous activities that were normally prohibited. Although there were slight repercussions, it was generally acceptable for young kids to wreak havoc on a town.

Christmas in Rural Tennessee

Nationality: American
Age: 86
Residence: Rancho Palos Verdes, California
Primary Language: English

Christmas in Rural Tennessee:

ME: All right, what can you tell me about what you did regularly for Christmas while you were growing up?

M.H.: Well, we were very poor, each one of us in our home, we had a chair that was just the right size for how big we were. So on Christmas morning, when we would get up, well I should say we would bring in a cedar tree and decorate it, and make homemade decorations like a paper chain, and stars, and stuff like that, because we didn’t have electricity. So, no Christmas lights, only from the fireplace. And then on Christmas morning our chairs would be around the fireplace, and of course, we didn’t have a lot of presents and anything like that, but we would always get something we wouldn’t normally get, like a banana, or an orange, or some kind of Brazil nuts.

ME: Something that would be considered a luxury.

M.H.: Very. It was something we didn’t have, we didn’t raise on the farm, because normally we didn’t go shopping. We would trade with the peddler for the meal what we really needed. But Christmas morning we would get up, and here we’d always have a candy cane, and basically, that was all we got for Christmas. But it was nice, because we were getting something we hadn’t had before.

ME: Very nice! What kind of food would your family prepare for Christmas? What was it like to gather around the table? Was it just your family, or did you have friends and other relatives over?

M.H.: With six children in the family, and our home was so small, we didn’t have room for anymore people. Normally relatives would come over in the summer, when it was warm outside. But during Christmas time, my mother told me if I gave her oranges, she would make an orange cake. And so we did that, but she always had, uh, maybe a ham for Christmas, that we did not normally have every day. I could not remember having beef, when I was young, because we did not go into town often, and it was expensive. I think I was probably around fourteen before I had my first hamburger that I could remember, but we would have plenty of dried foods like nuts, like peanuts, and walnuts, and that’s basically what food was like where I lived, because that’s what was grown. We would also have, uh, rabbits and squirrel, and that was the game, deer was very rare.

ME: Back then, there were no pesticides? So, there were no toxins sprayed into the environment, so it was OK to have squirrels?

M.H.: Well, squirrels were very rare, but in the winter time when we needed meat or protein of some kind, my mother would go out with a rifle, and she would then make squirrel stew.

ME: And was that a normal part of your Christmas dinner, too?

M.H.: Uh, no.

ME: And rabbits? What about beef, or pork?

M.H.: For pork, we practically had pork all the time for Christmas; smoked ham. And we had fish because we lived on the banks of the river, and chicken, and that was about it.

ME: And also about Christmas, that was Christmas Eve you were describing?

M.H.: No that was always Christmas Morning. Christmas Eve, we would hurry up and go to bed, because Santa Claus was coming.

ME: Then Santa Claus was for a long time a part of growing up for you?

M.H.: Yes, yes.

ME: OK, thank you.

 

The holiday of Christmas, as described by M.H., was heavily shaped by her rural background, as well as the bleak financial circumstances of the Great Depression. M.H. and her family rarely ate meat, due to expenses, although on Christmas, pork was often eaten. She also mentions that she held the familiar belief in Santa Claus, throughout her childhood. I live in luxury, compared to what M.H. had to endure, although she comes across as having been content, as though it was all that was familiar to her. There is one thing that we both hold in common however, and that is the ritual concerning Santa Claus, making an appearance and bearing gifts in the night, to be opened the next morning.