Category Archives: Rituals, festivals, holidays

Lunar New Year: Holiday

Context:

MT is of Vietnamese descent and discusses their experience with the Lunar New Years celebration growing up.

Interview:

Growing up, I was always confused about why we celebrated Lunar New Year about a month after the actual year began. As it turns out, in ancient times, Asian countries revolved around the lunar calendar and consequently celebrated New years at the start of the lunar calendar. It was a time of celebration, with dances and endless foods, as well as rejoicing with family members from all over.

While the culture around the lunar new year is one of superstition, which I found pointless as a kid, I see the importance of it to my family as it is no different from faith. It’s a way of life that encourages honor and integrity. The notion that our ancestors come to celebrate lunar new years with us keeps us in high spirits, and on our best behavior. As I meet my family less and less due to new life situations, I find myself looking forward to the good fortunes of gathering together on Lunar New Year, catching up on each other’s lives, and blessing one another with wisdom.

Analysis:

MT discusses how Lunar New Year’s celebrations evolved from the lunar calendar used by ancient Asian nations, highlighting how important it is as a time for lavish celebrations that include dances, large quantities of food, and get-togethers with family. These customs have a strong cultural foundation because they are based on principles and ideals that are similar to those of faith, such as honor and integrity. The idea that ancestor spirits take part in the celebrations draws attention to the folklore element, establishing a feeling of continuity and appreciation for the past, which shapes behavior and promotes a sense of community. As MT becomes older, there is a clear understanding of these customs as fundamental cultural practices, highlighting the way that folklore functions as a living tradition that reinforces societal ethics and family values.

Tết Trung Thu: Festival

Context:

AV is of Vietnamese descent and dives into a festival native to his culture and how it has impacted his life.

Interview:

When I was young, I eagerly awaited the Mid-Autumn Festival every year, or Tết Trung Thu in Vietnamese. Streets would be lit up with lanterns of all colors, and families would come together to celebrate the harvest season as well as the full moon. The lion dance, which I always found mesmerizing and exhilarating both for its novelty and its roots in ancient Chinese culture, was one particular highlight of this holiday.

    With age came an understanding of the festival’s underlying significance beyond mooncakes and lanterns. It is not only a time when we can give thanks for plentiful crops; it’s also an opportunity for individuals within communities to consider what they mean to one another about themselves and their environments during this bountiful period. This event holds dear in my heart because it represents unity among people who may otherwise never contact or interact with each other on any level – let alone in such large numbers – while facing difficult times together.

     Yet despite society having become more modernized over time, I strongly believe that traditions like Tết Trung Thu should be preserved at all costs. These customs serve as reminders of what connects us to our roots. Every autumnal equinox evening, as my family celebrates the Mid-Autumn Festival, I am filled with pride for being born into these customs that have been passed down through many generations before mine, as I have the privilege of continuing them.

Analysis:

AV shares his appreciation for the Mid-Autumn Festival (Tết Trung Thu) from a personal perspective, highlighting the cultural significance and community aspects that come along with the celebration. AV recalls childhood memories with the festival’s visual and performative elements like colorful lanterns and the lion dance, which are steeped in ancient traditions. Through time and maturity, AV shifts the understanding of the festival’s broader implications—recognizing it as a time for community introspection and unity, particularly in celebrating the harvest and reflecting on collective and individual identities within the environment.

Dia De Los Muertos: Holiday

Context:

BS is of Mexican descent from Michoacan, Mexico. BS shares his experience growing up with the Dia De Los Muertos Holiday, what it means to him, and how it has impacted him growing up.

Interview:

Growing up, I have always had to celebrate the death of my family members whether I knew them or not. I always questioned my mother, the one who would set up the ofrenda (offering) as to why we had to celebrate those who are dead if they are no longer with us and I was always scolded and told that it was our way of celebrating their life and what they stood for. Celebrating the 1st of November was always the saddest for me. The 1st is the day that we celebrate the death of children and typically there are a lot of toys and action figures put up on the offerings. As for the 2nd of November, that day is used to celebrate the adults that have passed. Usually, this ranges from 18 and up. The central idea of Dia De Los Muertos is to invite those who have passed back to the land of the living. A great example of this is in the movie COCO where those who have passed travel through a bridge of marigold flowers to the land of the living where they reach their destination, usually their past home or tombstone, where they can pick up and take back what is left out for them. Although my idea of Dia De Los Muertos has always been like any other holiday, I didn’t take it seriously until my father passed and I found that the only way to honor his life is to remember him by setting his picture up and placing items that he enjoyed during his time on earth. Dia De Los Muertos is a holiday used to reconnect with those who you want to remeber, whether that be a close loved one or anyone you believe is worthy of being remebered.

Analysis:

BS ties his connection with Dia De Los Muertos to his personal life and explains how they didn’t take the holiday seriously until they found a way to benefit it for their personal use. According to the interview, Dia De Los Muertos is a way to connect with spirits and give them humanistic/living traits to image the idea that they are still living and traveling to visit from the afterlife.

Conversations with Spirits during Dreams (Memorate)

Text 

Collector: “Have you ever been contacted by a spirit?” 

Informant: “With loved ones that I have lost, I have had experiences with them partially in the physical world and a lot in the metaphysical slash dream world. When our Nana died, I started having dreams about her and they felt immensely real. I’ll still have some every now and again. I’ve had experiences with my father’s grandfather who passed away. Immediately after he passed away, he came to me in a dream and told me things about myself, gifts that I had, and I felt like he was very at peace with his death. I only experienced him once, same with my great-grandmother. Two days prior to her physical death.” 

Collector: “What made this experience feel different than other dreams, your normal dreams?” 

Informant: “In these dreams, I felt paralyzed like another force was holding on to me. Almost like my soul was in a different place and then needed time to get back to my body. I found myself lying in bed. I heard the sound of static like a television channel. It grew louder. I grew more uneasy. My body felt celestial is the best way to put it.” 

Context

The Informant is a 26-year-old man. He’s had several spiritual interactions through intense dreams and episodes of sleep paralysis. Each interaction was with a deceased family member after or nearly before their time of passing. The Informant expressed he could have full-length conversations with the dead through this medium. 

Analysis

I found it interesting that the Informant’s spiritual interactions took place during vivid dreams. This reminded me of the article, “Ghostly Possession and Real Estate: The Dead in Contemporary Estonian Folklore” when the author Ülo Valk explains that, “visual and auditory experiences with spirits can also occur in dreamlike states.” (Valk 34) In this dream space, both parties could say their peace. These encounters also happened near the Spirit’s time of death. This could be interpreted as the Spirit “finishing business” with loved ones before moving on to the afterlife. Valk also notes that spiritual interactions commonly occur in transition periods where there are feelings of, “disorientation, uncertainty, discontinuity, [and] unrootedness.” (Valk 35) Those emotions are common during grief. For the Informant, these spiritual conversations helped both parties to emotionally move forward and find peace in their respective realms. 

Summoning a Plymouth Colonist Ghost through Song (Legend, Memorate)

Text

Collector: “Do you have any experiences with ghosts in your childhood?”

Informant: “Yeah, I was probably about 10 or 12 years old. I was in a town called Duxbury Massachusetts, which is right outside of Plymouth. In Duxbury, there is a little memorial park [for] one of the founding colonists on the Mayflower named Myles Standish he was a military general of Plymouth Colony. The cellar hole where his house used to stand, you can kinda walk down this cliff face to this beach. I was kickin’ it there with my buddies, swimming [in the water] and such, and the sun started to set. A friend of mine started telling this freaky ghost story he had heard on the internet. It was like a song that was starting to haunt people. He got the the end of the story and then started playing the song. The sun sets, it’s dusk, we look up at the cliff face and there’s this like dark pilgrim-looking figure standing up there and we started freaking out. We all saw it. It looked like someone was standing at the top of the cliff. So we [run] up the stairs and get to our bikes, we start peddling down the streets. That’s my ghost story.”

Context

The Informant is a 21-year-old male college student who grew up in Boston Massachusetts. As a child, he would visit Plymouth to see family and frequently heard legends about the land, its bloody history, and spirits who came back to haunt it. The informant’s friends summoned a colonist spirit by playing a song. 

Analysis

The Informant’s story is an example of a memorate because this spiritual encounter was a first-hand experience. The Friend’s “freaky ghost story” about a song was a legend that the group then decided to test. What intrigued me about the story was where the test took place. There was a memorial site on the land for a brutal colonist military general, Myles Standish. The English general was infamous for the ruthless slaughter of Neponset Band Natives in The Massacre at Wessagusset. Standish lured Natives into a small building where he stabbed and hung them. The general even (my Informant shared this with me during a different conversation) stuck a well-respected Neponset Band Warrior’s head on a pike to scare the Natives. The dead bodies did not get a proper “send-off” into the afterlife. According to our class lecture, some cultures believe that the absence of a ritual or funeral ceremony for the dead means spirits cannot transition into the afterlife. Instead, the spirits are condemned to haunting the land where they died. Plymouth is not only haunted by spirits but by its history. The story of Myles Standish delegitimizes the land and calls into question rightful ownership. This supports Professor Thompson’s commentary on why Americans do not encourage or embrace the practice of folklore.