Tag Archives: Catholicism

Dancing With the Devil

Text: “My grandma told me this story from a time when she was young and she liked to party in downtown Juarez, Mexico. In the late 1950s, my grandma was in her late teens, and one night she went out to party. As she became drunk throughout the night and enjoyed her time with her friends, a Tejano with a tall figure and blue eyes asked her to dance. She said yes, and as the night went on, the dance floor became more vibrant and she lost track of time. Suddenly, the doors shut and no one was allowed in or out. Because the dance floor was so full, people couldn’t see that this man had the feet of a goat. She tried to leave the club, but the man chased her to the door, and the lights went out. One by one, people started to get murdered, and there was an eerie laughter in the background. She noticed what was going on, then she was able to find an escape route through the back of the building.”

Context: My informant – a 29-year-old man from Las Cruces, New Mexico – told me this story, drawing on the legend he and his siblings would hear from their grandmother as they progressed from adolescence to young adulthood. He explained to me that this was a story he heard from his grandma whenever he would come home late or be out with friends, and he believed it basically served as a warning to not spend too much time out of the house and away from family or else the Devil will come for you.

Analysis: Upon investigating this legend, I came across a news article titled “San Antonio’s Dancing Devil of El Camaroncito.” In this article, the story parallels the one my informant told me almost to a tee, describing a man dressed to the nines who wooed all the ladies in attendance and swept them off their feet. However, as the night went on, people started to recognize that his feet were not those of a human, and after people started to panic, the man fled out of the nightclub through an open window. While the story described in the news article is almost exactly the same as the one my informant told me at the beginning, my informant’s version takes a darker turn, with the dancing Devil going on a murderous rampage in the club. I was curious to understand what might have caused the two stories to end on two drastically different notes.

My informant heard this story from his grandmother, a devout Catholic woman. As someone who also grew up in a Catholic family, I know that the over consumption of alcohol is considered to be a sin. In his grandmother’s version of the legend, she had indulged excessively in alcohol, and that ultimately brought her face-to-face with the Devil. Among a crowd of excessively intoxicated people, the Devil began to claim his sinful souls, stealing their lives and taking them back to Hell for their sins. This story told to my informant by his grandmother is similar to an example provided by Larry Danielson in his chapter on religious folklore. Danielson recalls the anxieties recounted to him by Roman Catholic friends and family before their first communions as they “had been warned by their elders, sometimes by their parochial school teachers, that if they chewed the communion wafer, their mouths would fill with blood” (50). Danielson describes how this is a prime example of religious folk belief, as it isn’t upheld by the institution but instead through oral tradition.

My informant’s legend is an example of religious folklore. His grandmother told him and his younger family members this story as they approached the age where they would begin to drink alcohol and party with their friends, and in order to dissuade them from doing so, his grandmother told them of the time where she committed that same sin, and the Devil almost came for her for it. Of course the Bible doesn’t say that if a teenager goes and gets drunk at the club, the Devil will appear and take their soul; but pulling on a collective fear in a shared faith will hopefully dissuade my informant from indulging in sin, at least in his grandmother’s eyes. 

References:

Danielson, Larry. “Religious Folklore.” In Folk Groups and Folklore Genres: An Introduction, edited by Elliott Oring, 45-69. Utah State University Press, 1986.

Shadows, Chasing. “San Antonio’s Dancing Devil of El Camaroncito.” San Antonio Current, 31 Oct. 2011, https://www.sacurrent.com/news/san-antonios-dancing-devil-of-el-camaroncito-2250845. 

The Color Changing Rosary

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Houston, Texas
Performance Date: 3/30/23
Primary Language: English

Context:

19-year-old S was raised Catholic in Houston, Texas. When she was in 9th grade, she attended her first overnight church retreat. During this retreat, she experienced the Catholic tradition of Adoration, in which the body of Christ in the form of the sacramental bread is displayed for prayer in the church.

Text:

During Adoration, S prayed her rosary, which was a gift from her grandmother. It had lavender-purple faux crystal beads. While praying she was overcome with emotion and started to cry. She put the rosary away and went to confession. Once adoration ended, she left the church and returned to a different building where they broke off into small groups to talk about the experience.

S opened up the little white bag containing the rosary and suddenly noticed that the beads were a bright baby blue. She believed that the rosary had changed color during Adoration, coinciding with her intense emotional experience. This belief was affirmed by the adults leading the retreat, who told her that blue is the Virgin Mary’s color, meaning that she must have performed the miracle. S told her story to the whole room (50+ people) and called her mom in tears to tell her about the miracle. This moment was the strongest she had ever believed in God, but it was probably the last moment she ever believed to that extent as well.


The next morning when her mom came to pick her, S pulled out the rosary to show her. Her heart sank as it was purple again. She snuck back into the youth center and realized the grave mistake: it was only the lighting of that room that had changed the color of the rosary. Immediately she felt embarrassed for having believed such a miracle could have occurred. S says that her belief in Catholicism pretty much declined from there, largely due to other factors but also the humiliation of such an underwhelming event.

Analysis:

S thought she had a personal experience of myth, or the occurrence of a miracle, which is central to Catholic mythology. Often, for people growing up in christian communities, they are instilled with expectations for God’s incessant greatness and love for all his creation. Catholicism especially holds the notion of every-day miracles at its core, preaching that the divine can send little miracles, or head-nods, to acknowledge his creation and the hope of their eventual salvation.

The Christian doctrine creates endless promises to its followers, giving them hope for when hope is absent. However, when such promises are not conceived in any way, people tend to drift away from God. It is an underwhelming and confounding experience, which in turn deters followers from Christian doctrine and introduces them into a realm of harsh reality.

S believed she had experienced a miracle, which was so central to her belief system at the time. However, once she realized her miracle was false, she not only snapped back to reality, but also realized the prospect that much more than just the color-changing rosary was an underwhelming lie. Although she mentioned that other factors played a role in her rift from the church, this instance is symbolic of what happens with many when religious beliefs get flipped on their head.

Irish Proverb: “May you be in heaven 15 minutes before the devil knows you’re dead”

Nationality: American
Age: 52
Occupation: Unemployed
Residence: Thousand Oaks, CA
Performance Date: 2/22/23
Primary Language: English

Text: “May you be in heaven 15 minutes before the devil knows you’re dead”

Background: M is an American of Irish ethnicity that, during her childhood, enjoyed the bountiful wisdom of her Irish grandmother. M was also raised in an Irish Catholic household.

Context:  M recalls this proverb being said by her grandmother when she would commit venial (small) sins. It means that you can commit these venial sins and enjoy your life to the fullest extent as long as you are cunning enough to slip past the devil on Judgement Day and make your way to heaven.

Analysis: Like many other Irish proverbs, this proverb takes on a more comedic perspective of the Catholic faith. Rather than taking Catholic doctrine seriously, it proposes an excuse for sinful behavior. Although based in and in reference to Catholic theology, the proverb advises sin if you are able to escape the ultimate punishment: hell. Such a perspective can be explained by a more modern and ethnic-approach to Catholicism. Since Irish Catholics have a long history of fighting for religious freedom against Protestant forces, present day Irish Catholics have implemented their religious history as part of their identity. Therefore, although many may no longer be truly devout in their faith, they still identify with Catholicism almost as an ethnicity of sorts.

“Hail Holy Queen, please let this light turn green”

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: unemployed
Residence: Simi Valley, CA
Performance Date: 2/22/23
Primary Language: English

Text: “Hail Holy Queen, please let this light turn green”

Background: A is an American catholic who is very devout and prayerful in her daily life. She often incorporates prayer into everyday tasks, even when driving her car to the grocery store.

Context: A says this little prayer every time she’s late, gets stuck at a pesky red light, and is desperately trying to get to her destination on time. She believes that it’s a grounding and wholesome little prayer that helps her regain patience, but also calls upon the Holy Mother (Mary) to enact her wish.

Analysis: This little short prayer demonstrates how many Christians like to call upon God or religious icons to help them through their every day lives. For a Catholic like A, calling upon Mary demonstrates the role that Jesus’s mother plays in the Catholic faith tradition. Although not worshipping or praying to her as a divine being, Catholics call upon Mary as a guiding force and role model. This directly contrasts the traditions of Protestant faiths, who do not view Mary in a similar light, but as a humble woman and historical figure in the Biblical epic. Therefore, they would not call upon her guidance in such moments throughout the day. A’s little prayer, like most Catholic prayers, highlights the importance of biblical icons, like Mary, to the faith tradition.

LA Parking Prayer

Nationality: Brazilian-American
Age: 32
Occupation: Marketer
Residence: Salt Lake City, UT
Performance Date: 2/24/23
Primary Language: English

Background

This short prayer was given to the informant by a friend who had grown up in Los Angeles. The interviewee is currently living in Salt Lake City, Utah, but lived in Los Angeles for ten years. This is a prayer to find a parking spot in LA, only meant to be invoked in true desperation. She is of Latin American descent.

Text

MM: Um, Okay. It is “Mary, Mary, full of grace, help me find a parking space” and it’s used to help you find a parking space, uh, when you are looking for street parking or in a car park, a crowded parking lot.

MM: Um, and, but you have to use it very sparingly. I can’t, you can’t just like at, for, you know, you have to have been looking for a minute before you can use it.

MM: Um, I first heard it from a friend who grew up in LA and she pulled it out after we’d been searching for parking for quite a while and she said she keeps it in her back pocket for absolute emergencies. We found a parking spot immediately and it has not failed me since, but again, only used in emergencies.

Interviewer: Sparingly.

MM: Sparingly. Yes. Yes. And by emergency, I mean, you know, a Los Angeles emergency, which is there’s no valet.

Interviewer: Haha, yeah.

MM: Truly an emergency.

Analysis

This is an example of folk speech, more specifically a prayer. I had heard this prayer from the interviewee some time ago and knew it would be perfect for the archive.

As any LA driver can attest, it can be extremely difficult to find parking on the streets of Los Angeles. One can find themselves driving around endlessly, and this prayer is meant to save them from the struggle. As the interviewee states, the prayer cannot be used in any situation. Instead, it can only be invoked at a time of desperation or emergency, when hope is nearly lost for finding a parking space. This maintains a certain significance to the prayer; if it does not work, the situation might not have been desperate enough.

This example of folk speech likely evolved through the converging influences of car culture and Catholicism on Los Angeles. This prayer is invoked almost in jest, rather than it being attached to any true religious belief. The informant, notably, does not have any ties to Catholicism. Still, the prayer mentions Mary, most likely the Virgin Mary, pointing to its roots in Catholic belief. This prayer is an excellent example of how folk belief evolves from the environment and culture it finds itself in.