A Portland Christmas (Childhood)

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Portland, Oregon
Performance Date: 4/14/2018
Primary Language: English

Informant Info: The informant is a 22-year-old male who was born and raised in Portland, Oregon and comes from a Catholic family. He currently is a senior at USC and is very into half-marathon and marathon racing.

Interview Transcript:

Interviewer: Growing up, did you have any big holiday traditions?

 

Interviewee: I would say my mom is the biggest proponent of like keeping the traditions strong in our family. I would also say that Christmas is definitely the one that has most traditions surrounding it. When I was a kid we had ones that would be like kind of like silly now. We would we all do the mass on Christmas Eve together to a Catholic Mass. Before that we always went off to a nice dinner. And at that point nice was Olive Garden for me. So that’s what I though was a nice dinner (laughter). That was a joy. But I think later on I realized that Olive Garden was not indeed a nice dinner, so we changed it up a little bit. But up until I was probably in like the seventh or eighth grade, I uh – We did that as a tradition. So, would go out, we’d have the same waitress at the Olive Garden and we’d have our same meals. I would always order the same thing you know like a fettuccine alfredo and a raspberry lemonade. I remember that very clearly. And then after that I would go to Mass. I think it used to be at 10:00. And then we come home, and we do our little rituals….we had a very set routine before we go to bed on Christmas Eve. We would come around, my mom would have the cookies that she would have out, uhh she’d bring a variety of cookies into the living room and then be laid and

we would each have one or two of those. And then we would read a book. So, we’d have like a massive stack of Christmas books in our living room. And you choose two to three for people to read and at that everyone would be getting pretty tired, so my mom would usually read it and we kind of like were falling asleep. But before that we actually would write a letter to Santa. So, one interesting thing about my parents is that they still will not openly admit that there is no Santa. So even though it’s all kind of like tongue and cheek at this point… Like it’s a bit silly that we still have to write a letter to Santa even though you know as the youngest I’m 22 years old and so that’s kind of like I would say had an example of like the emphasis my mom has on tradition. And so we always write a letter to Santa and maybe cookies and a beer at this point. Uh and so, in the morning, Santa has written back and has eaten the cookies and has drank some of the beer as well. But then in the evening what we do is we have the cookies then we have my mom read the story and then we write a letter to Santa and then we open one present. When I was a kid that was like what I really looked forward to and now as the presents dwindle underneath the tree…We’re like kind of like “Well I really don’t need to because that’d be opening like half of my presents under the tree!”

So we still most of that, I still have like that tradition of it. And then we go to bed. Usually right around midnight. When I was a kid I would always try and stay up as late as I could, as always, and try and listen for Santa coming in. And now I’m like just like a homebody. So I’m like already so exhausted and like “I’m going to sleep, I’ll get up in the morning” and then I would say like in the morning it always would be I would be the first one up. So I would be because I was young as I was usually the one to get up and like my brothers and sisters who are teenagers they would sleep in later. I would always get up and I would try and run to the kitchen and my parents would get up and grab me and not let them go in there quite yet because whenever we wanted to open our presents or see our stuff from Santa we would always have to be there together so I would just sit in parents room and I’d be like sitting from 6:30 to 8 just waiting for everyone to get up and it was the longest hour of my life. Eventually it’d get later and later the older we got.

Anyways, then we would go into the living room together and our presents from Santa wouldn’t be wrapped, they’d be in or by our stocking, so we’d go and see if we got what we wanted and them we went. Then all the other presents would be wrapped so we would do our Santa stuff at first and then my mom would start making breakfast and she’d made most of breakfast the day before. We have really big, really big breakfast with like a casserole and bacon and grapefruit and cinnamon rolls and stuff like that. And that’s something I always look forward to and it was like the calm before the storm of seeing what our Santa presents were and opening the wrapped presents. Instead of just going in and ripping them open, my mom always made sure we had always taken turns, or all had one at a time to open. Afterwards, she’d make sure you wrote thank you notes afterwards. When I was a kid, I was kind of impatient but now I appreciate it. So that was like when I was a kid and those were my habits and traditions. As I’ve gotten older, they’ve changed and adapted slightly but not by much.

Analysis:

The informant’s family Christmas seems to be a very traditional American and Catholic Christmas. On a religious level, it is one of the most important holidays, and he holds Christmas Mass to be very dear to him. On the other end of the spectrum, it seems extremely traditional in terms of it being a time that the family can be very close together. His family traditions of having a large Christmas eve dinner, opening one present at a time, and having a large meal on Christmas align with my own family’s traditions and shares similarities with many other Christmas collections.

Nickname Mix-Up

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Portland, Oregon
Performance Date: 4/14/2018
Primary Language: English

Informant Info: The informant is a 22-year-old male who was born and raised in Portland, Oregon and comes from a Catholic family. He currently is a senior at USC and is very into half-marathon and marathon racing.

 

Interview Transcript:

Interviewer: Any major proverbs or inside jokes within your family?

 

Interviewee: My mom always calls me Pedros Diaz  um because… and that’s I mean when people are like “I don’t really get that”. But what happened was I was a kid…when I was like 10. We were in Costa Rica for like my dad’s vacation and we were learning Spanish and I was just not very good at it and the guy just kept quizzing me. He was like “Yeah, so you know like what is your name? How old are you?” And I just got confused at the time and he was like “How old are you? PEDRO! And he’s like “what’s your name?” DIAZ!! So, I my Spanish mixed up and then, so he was like “AH Pedro Diaz!!!” And then I guess my parents have just called me that ever since. And then other proverbs I would say umm my parents always said just like treat others like you want to be treated… Uhh so I know that’s a pretty common one. But one they definitely had me remember and whenever I strayed from that they would sit me down and say something like “Is that how you want someone to treat you in that sense” or something like that. I think those are great first steps words like developing like any sort of empathy. I just realized that while my parents are really good. Like if I did something like I said I’m their friend they would really speak out to be like how does that make you feel that you’re in their shoes. And so, I think very encouraging that through something like that phrase made me think about other people’s perspectives. So, I think it definitely I feel like I still do think about it on my way. But I feel like as a kid I probably thought about it more than many a lot of other kids. So, I would say them saying that definitely made me feel more empathetic as a kid.

 

Analysis:

This collection resembles an inside joke on a family level. The informant’s simple mistake in learning a new language turned into an inside joke when the Spanish tutor just went along with calling him “Pedro Diaz”. Instead of laughing at the moment and letting it fade into the past, his parents held on to the memory. It was a shared moment and serves as a joke within the family. Individuals outside of the family may not understand the meaning behind it, but to the informant and his family, the simple nickname holds a fond memory that brings laughter. When telling the story, he visibly and audibly got excited and cheerful when describing the context of the story. This will likely be a joke that will continue to be passed down within the family to his kids.

 

 

Race-day Rituals

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Portland, Oregon
Performance Date: 4/14/2018
Primary Language: English

Informant Info: The informant is a 22-year-old male who was born and raised in Portland, Oregon and comes from a Catholic family. He currently is a senior at USC and is very into half-marathon and marathon racing.

 

Interview Transcript:

 

Interviewer: I know you run a lot of races pretty often. Do you have any pre-race rituals or lucky items you contribute to your success?

 

Interviewee: Before my very first race I made a pesto pasta, with broccoli, onions, and peppers the night before. In the morning I always had a small bowl oatmeal a cup of coffee, and like 3 Glasses of water. I did really, really good, so I consider it my lucky meal and make it before every single race I run, and only before races. And I always wear the same socks when run my race and I only wear them when I race. Ummm….And what else?

 

Interviewer: Why would you contribute is like a lucky meal or socks.

 

Interviewee: I would say the socks… well I would say the meal is one that’s like where I feel like…decent. And then…. But all of them were like I just I want to kind of keep it… because a lot of changes and… No matter what changes in my life, whether I change my race, or I get a different this or that or whatever I want to keep some things the same and the meal is something I enjoy it and it makes me feel good and also, I’m like I did well the first time I did it. I did really well uhh or had like a good race and so after that I was like I don’t really want to change it or kinda looked back at my what I did, and I was like: What do I want to keep, what I want to change, and I decided I wanted to keep the meal. Ummm…and, so I would say really well, and I was like I’m going to keep this and hopefully somehow it contributes. And for the socks, they’ve been the same pair of socks that I’ve worn every time I set a PR. And whenever I don’t wear them, I seem to do worse. So better safe than sorry, you know?

 

Analysis:

In folklore, this idea of a “lucky item” can be fit into the genre of superstitions/folk beliefs. There is no way to prove that it’s the meal or socks that actually help him in his races, but to him, they consistently do. The informant mentions this himself by stating that he considers them as his lucky meal and lucky socks because he has done well every time. By doing so, he doesn’t explicitly call them lucky, but rather he seems afraid to risk changing them and not having the same performance. It could be a simple coincidence that his lucky socks just so happened to be the one’s he was wearing when he set his PR’s, but it could be further analyzed by seeing if the socks have better cushioning or compression that help him maintain his speed. In this particular case, the belief in luck seems minimalistic.

 

The Kraken

Nationality: USA
Age: 45
Occupation: Attorney
Residence: USA
Performance Date: 4/19/2018
Primary Language: English

My Aunt Elaine lives on the coast of Denmark in this tiny little town… I can’t remember the name. I probably wouldn’t be able to pronounce it if I did. But when I was little we would go and visit her… that was just about the only trip my family and I would take back then, to Denmark to visit the family. We’d stay at her house right on the beach, there was this grass out front that would blow all day long in the wind and tickle your face if you laid in it. And she had this airy room as her attic that was stocked full of toys, mostly Legos. And we’d play with them all day long. And help her cook. But the most fun was to go play in the water outside. There was this long dock that stretched into the water and kids would jump off of it, swim to shore, then jump off it again. All day long. But no one ever swam much past the dock. I’m sure you’ve heard of The Kraken. Well, the adults would tell us all stories of this giant squid that lurked in the deep ocean, but was too big to swim in past the dock. So as long as we stayed close to the shore—and never went past the end of the dock, we were safe from The Kraken. If we swam out too far, we were in danger of getting dragged down to the bottom of the ocean by it. My aunt used to tell me it liked little girls with long, blonde hair. I was a little girl with long, blonde hair. Ha, ha. They definitely told us this so they could drink too much wine and not have to worry about jumping into the ocean and saving us. But I still am kind of freaked out to go too deep into the ocean, and I think its because of this. My survival instincts are still telling me to stay away from The Kraken!

G learned the story of The Kraken from her aunt, and the story is special to her because it became a part of her adult life, as well. When she swims in the ocean, she still thinks about The Kraken lurking underneath the waves.

I’ve heard about The Kraken before—mostly through the movie “Pirates of the Caribbean.” I’ve never been afraid of a giant squid, but I have heard stories about the megladon shark lurking in the ocean, so I suppose mostly everyone is afraid of some unknown, possibly mythical creature in the depths of the ocean.

Spirit Coins

Nationality: USA
Age: 45
Occupation: Attorney
Residence: USA
Performance Date: 4/19/2018
Primary Language: English

The dead supposedly communicate with us with loose pennies and nickels. Not just random coins in the middle of the street, but by placing them in weird places for you to find. It’s a symbol to let us know that they are okay. A few months after my dad died, I had this dream about him. I was walking through a park with a group of other people and I turned around and he was just there. Just standing there. And it was so vivid. Like… it wasn’t a dream. I said, ‘Dad, what are you doing here?’ and he told me he was okay and that I shouldn’t be sad or worried. He told me he was working out and lifted up his shirt to show me how flat it was. He looked so good! He said he got to pick the age he wanted to stay forever and picked his fifties. I gasped and was like, “Oh my god, Dad, you look so good.” He was so happy. And he reached out his arms all wide and I leaned in to give him a hug and then I was awake. It was so real… I can’t even tell you how real it felt. And so when I woke up I was all shaken and upset and I was crying that morning. And I had a party to go to later that afternoon and I was running late and your dad was hollering at me from downstairs that it was time to go. So I was running around looking for shoes and couldn’t find the pair I wanted so I just grabbed a pair of white sneakers. And as I was leaving my closet one of the shoes slipped out of my hand and dropped onto the floor. And there was this loud clanking noise, like “CLANK, CLANK.” And I was all confused, like, “What was that?” So I reached down and saw this penny. And I’ve never seen a penny like it before. And it was perfect, like so clean and shiny. Like brand new. Like, how does a penny end up in a shoe? And I can’t remember the last time I had a penny—I never have pennies. And so now I carry it around everywhere. I think it was from my dad… telling me everything is okay, things will be okay. It’s too weird for me to think anything else.

G read a story about loose pennies and how they relate to the dead a while before her father passed away. She remembered it a few weeks after his passing, but didn’t think much of it until she had the dream and found the penny. Now she believes steadfastly in the communication of the deceased with coins, and has her own story as proof.

This story was told by G first asking if I’d “ever seen a penny like this before,” and presenting a penny from her pocket. Its story followed suit.

This story gave me chills because of the penny presented as proof. I think it is a beautiful and comforting belief to have, and I’m not sure I will be able to shake it. I think every time I find a coin in a strange spot I might question how it got there—or who exactly put it there.