Christmas Present Map

Nationality: American
Age: 37
Occupation: Homemaker
Residence: Dana Point
Performance Date: 3/19/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: n/a

Main Piece:

The following conversation is transcribed from a conversation between me (HS) and my mother/informant (SW).

HS: When I was young, you would make a map of our home with presents marked as x’s scattered throughout the house. Where did you get this tradition from?

SW: From what I can remember, my mom would make Christmas maps for us when we were kids. Particularly for my brother, because he was always super adventurous. My mom may have gotten it from her family, but I’m not 100% sure. Anyways, I remember the first time I did it for you so well. You totally lit up and got super excited, and so I would make a map of our house every year and hide presents in obscure places. At first, I would hide the presents in pretty easy-to-find places, but as you got older I had to get a lot more creative so that you wouldn’t find them in 30 seconds.

Background:

My informant is my mother. She was raised in Huntington Beach, California, but she moved to Kansas with her family when she was 16 because a majority of her family was living there and in Missouri. She always dreamed of coming back to California and took the first opportunity she could get to come back. She now lives in Dana Point.

Context:

I was sitting at dinner with my parents and was talking to my mom about how she had gotten the idea to make a Christmas present map.

Thoughts:

I have always been curious about this tradition within my family, particularly because I often wonder whether it is unique to us or not. If there is one thing that I have learned from taking ANTH 333, it is that a lot of traditions that people think are unique to them are in fact not and in some cases actually very widespread.

Opening Day Cannon

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 3/9/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: n/a

The following conversation is transcribed from a conversation between me (HS) and my friend/informant (DS).

HS: So for opening day, your yacht club fires off a blank cannon shot?

DS: Yessir

HS: And is this tradition particular to your club?

DS: Not really. A vast majority of clubs do it. It’s basically signaling that the club is open for the year. What is interesting, though, is that, because we’re in southern California where there’s good weather, our club is open all year. So our opening and closing day kind of happen at the same time if that makes sense. It’s nothing like that on the east coast. There, water freezes over and they have to bring their boats in and all of that. So for clubs on the east coast, the tradition makes a lot more sense. Because we don’t have to do any of that in southern California, opening and closing days are just symbolic and give everyone an opportunity to be together and have a good time.

Background:

My informant is a friend that I went to high school and now college with. His family is part of a yacht club and he has been sailing since he was young. He is involved with his club and has been a sailing instructor there before.

Context:

We were out with a few other people on a Duffy when we docked at my informant’s yacht club so that some people could use the restroom. While we were waiting, I asked some questions about the club out of curiosity.

Thoughts:

I am not a member of a yacht club, so it was cool to learn and be exposed to some traditions that I had not experienced before. I find it interesting that opening and closing day at most clubs in southern California are symbolic. It made me realize how lucky I am to live in a place where there’s good weather and there’s no need to prepare for the winter in any way. The fact that a blank cannon round is used to signal opening day leads me to think that the tradition is hundreds of years old, harking back to a time were ships were fitted with cannons as they crossed the treacherous Atlantic from Europe. It’s crazy to think that no matter how much we progress as a society in terms of technology, we still find comfort in the unique traditions of our ancestors.

St. Lucia’s Day Sweden

Nationality: Swedish
Age: 45
Occupation: Relationship Banker
Residence: Laguna Niguel
Performance Date: 4/19/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Swedish

Main Piece:

The following conversation is transcribed from a conversation between me (HS) and my co-worker/informant (SC).

HS: So you have some particular traditions that you celebrate here in the United States that you got from your Swedish heritage, is that right?

SC: Oh yeah. Lots of stuff that we do and when I tell people they’re like, really? I’ve never heard of this before! So we celebrate Santa Lucia or St. Lucia Day- it’s kind of like a pre-Christmas holiday. It’s a really big thing back in Sweden where my family is from and we’ve kind of carried it on out here. It basically commemorates this girl who died while bringing food to Christians that were trying to escape the Romans. My daughter dresses up in all white to represent the purity of Saint Lucia and there’s a big feast after. Lots of amazing food. You’ve gotta try saffron bread.

Background:

My informant is a co-worker from my job. He is a Relationship Banker, and so we work a lot less closely than my other co-workers on the teller line. Regardless, he is a great guy and we enjoy a little office rivalry- he went to UCLA. Yuck. His parents immigrated to the United States from Sweden, but because he still has a lot of family living there, he visits a lot and in the process has brought back a lot of Swedish traditions to his family here in the United States.

Context:

We had gotten all of the pre-opening work done that we needed to get done, and it just so happened that our Branch Manager brought in some Dunkin Donuts to rally the morale of the troops. And so my co-worker and I sit there, grubbing some glazed donuts, going about the usual surface-level conversation. The typical weekend updates, customer complaints, all the good stuff. I decided to shift the conversation to talk about a tradition that my family and I had done the past weekend and asked if he had any that he did with his family. He was delighted to hear the question and started elaborating immediately.

Thoughts:

It was interesting to learn about this tradition and how important it is in Swedish culture. According to some brief research that I did about the holiday, it is supposed to mark a time of light and happiness in a time of a lot of darkness. A lot of schools end classes early so that families can prepare for the festivities. The aspect of the holiday that I found most intriguing was how it incorporates both pagan and Christian traditions. This has to do with an inherent struggle between light and darkness that Pagan culture elaborates a lot upon, as the geographic location of Sweden leads to long periods of light and darkness instead of the typical day. Scholars have gone as far as to say that St. Lucia is simply the Norse goddess Freya “dressed up” as a Christian saint.

Source of Pagan “dress up” theory:
https://www.norwegianamerican.com/victory-light-winters-dark-gloom/#:~:text=Some%20scholars%20believe%20that%20the,up%E2%80%9D%20as%20a%20Christian%20saint.

Trojan Marching Band: Old Navy, A Drumline Tradition

Nationality: N/A
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 30 April 2021
Primary Language: English

Background: The Trojan Marching Band is known as Hollywood’s Band for its many, many appearances in tv, movies, and advertisements. They have appeared in shows like Glee and Scrubs, movies like Forrest Gump, and programs like the Black Entertainment Television (BET) Awards. Through these connections, the band has also taken part in various events for companies around the world. In 2014, Gap Inc. hired the TMB drumline to perform for the grand opening of their largest Old Navy store in Shanghai, China. The informant, CN, relays this story how he was told it.

Main Piece: Because the Trojan Marching Band has a particular brand and logo, most companies won’t want to pay for the rights for those or have the band’s uniform tied to their advertisements. CN tells me that most companies have them simply cover up their TMB logos with tape, wear their harnesses, or wear something entirely different. For the Old Navy performance, Gap Inc. supplied the drumline with specially made covers meant to go over both the uniform and harness that would blend in and bear the Old Navy logo instead of the TMB one (Pictures can be found Here). 

Drumline members in Shanghai playing for the Old Navy gig in 2014. Note that the Old Navy covers are over the drum harnesses, and seem to blend into the uniform.

After the gig, CN said that the drumline got to keep some of those covers, but that they didn’t have anything to do with them. That is until a member of the drumline had the idea to use one of the remaining Old Navy vests as a form of punishment for freshmen. At the start of Saturday morning rehearsals, which is at 7:34am, whoever is the last freshman cymbal player to arrive has to wear Old Navy for the entire Saturday morning practice. As time went on, Old Navy got dirtier and dirtier, but no one ever washed it. Now, CN says that the drumline still uses the Old Navy tradition to give incentive for freshman cymbal players to show up as early as possible. The cymbals often receive the most freshmen out of any subsection of the drumline, so it’s important to the upperclassmen to make sure the freshmen have a reason to show up on time. Certainly, wearing a dirty, smelly vest over your clothes early in on a Saturday morning can’t be enjoyable, so freshmen have to learn to plan ahead to avoid it.

Context: Old Navy is a piece of the TMB’s history in that it marked a drumline trip to China for a big advertisement gig, but it also appears regularly through the Old Navy tradition. Every Saturday from 7:34am to 10:00am the TMB practices, even on game days, and punctuality is paramount for these early morning rehearsals.

Thoughts: I believe that Old Navy is used primarily for humiliation to teach freshmen “to be early is to be on time.” By CN’s account, the smell isn’t really that bad and the thick cover can help to prevent a new cymbal player from accidentally pinching their skin and clothes between the cymbals. Humiliation as a driving force can push freshmen to wake up earlier than their peers and spark a sort of competition of punctuality. 

Annotation: Band Bangs the Drums in Shanghai https://studentaffairs.usc.edu/usc-band-bangs-the-drums-in-shanghai/ 

Afghanistan: Mullah Joke and Religious Rigidity

Nationality: Afghani
Age: 71
Occupation: N/A
Residence: N/A
Performance Date: 2 May 2021
Primary Language: English

Context: TA is a 71 year old clan head in Afghanistan and served as the Minister of International Relations for a previous president of Afghanistan. In this joke, he mentions Mullahs, which are educated Muslim men who often teach the religion. In the joke, TA discusses differences in religious rigidity.

Main Piece: The following joke was told to TA about six or seven years ago from some students he encountered in an Afghan village. He told me that the joke is primarily about religious rigidity, and it makes fun of how some people are too rigid with religious beliefs. 

Transcript:

TA: Some boys, their fathers send them to the temple on Fridays to listen to some recitation from the Holy Book. And then the Mullah also tries to teach them religion. And he was telling the boys, “If at any time you have a crush on a woman or someone, you must go and take a bath because you’re not clean and you have to be clean to offer worship… you won’t be able to do that if you have a crush on the woman or you see her in a dream. But the thing is even if you have a dream, you’re dreaming of another woman and you’re dreaming of having sex with her. You must go, even if you don’t have any intimate relations with her, just go and tell her so that she also takes a bath.” So some young guys, they’re smart guys, and they wanna make fun of him. So the next morning he goes and he knocks on the Mullah’s door, he says “I’m sorry to say this, but last night I had a dream, and I had your wife with me in the dream. If you could please ask your wife to take a bath.” So the guy is very angry, but he can’t say anything because that’s what he taught them. And the next day he goes and talks to him again, and the Mullah says “what now?” And the guy says “Well, Mullah, you take a bath please.”

[Laugh together]

HR: Do you know, where did you first hear that joke?

TA: I was in a village in Afghanistan just a few years ago, 6-7 years ago, these were students I was talking to, and they told me this story…

HR: Do you think that this was a joke told to make fun of religion in general? Like how in the US we like to make fun of Catholic priests for some of the same things?

TA: Not so much in general, but it’s just about the rigidity… some people see religion as very rigid, and others don’t.

Thoughts: I think that the humor in it is similar to the humor in making fun of Western religious teachings. Whenever religion is so rigid that it locks people into hard rules for their lives, it invites them to challenge that authority through humor. This joke provides a divergence from religious culture while tying into the direct punchlines of other Afghan jokes.