Tag Archives: children

Eidee : Receiving Money for Nowruz

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/27/20
Primary Language: English
Language: Farsi

Background: The informant is a sophomore film student at USC. He learned the tradition from practicing it with his mother’s side of the family during his childhood in San Ramon, CA. His mother was born in the US to Iranian parents and moved back to Iran for a brief period of time before moving back to the US. It is worth noting that the informant prefers the term Persian rather than Iranian when discussing his cultural background.  

Context: The following is transcribed from an over-the-phone interview with the informant. The informant and I are well acquainted so the discussion was casual.

Piece: 

Informant: “The reason I’m saying Nowruz really weirdly is that I usually call it eid. So the money, the two dollar bills my grandma would give us that’s called eidee. Usually people don’t give gifts for eidee like eidee refers to a gift you’ve received because of new years but most people don’t give like a physical gift, most people give money. So like I might get like a twenty dollar or a five dollar, you know like it’s usually small. It’s very symbolic it’s sort of like I think Chinese New Year, you get like the little red envelope. So it’s like a similar thing. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a physical thing as a gift for eidee, maybe my mom just gives me chocolates, you know. It’s just a small little gesture.

Collector: “Is it usually family members who give it to you?”

Informant: “In my experience, the way my family we have the literal family but we also have like you know family friends who are essentially family who I would get eidee from. I mean it’s whoever comes to the [Nowruz/Eid] party. But like my mom would not give eidee to her sister, it’s really more of a thing for the kids. In my family it’s really just a thing for the kids. Maybe my grandma gives it to her daughters, but I doubt it.”

Analysis: Children are often seen as the future, the new/next generation. Because of this, many cultures celebrate the new year by dawning fortune upon children. I’ve heard of a very similar tradition for the Chinese New Year, as mentioned by the informant, in which children are given red envelopes filled with money. I was surprised to hear the informant refer to Nowruz as “Eid” because this is an Arabic, rather than Farsi, word for “festival, holiday.” Eidi is also a word used to refer to a gift given by elders to a child (usually money) usually for the Muslim holidays of Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. This practice is very similar to the one described by the informant based on what the gift is and who is giving and receiving it.The informant specified the spelling of “eidee” rather than eidi, but their similar pronunciation and practice is worth noting. In either case, the practice appears to be a way for the past generation (the elders) to invest in the future generation as liminal demarcations of time pass. 

White Rabbit, White Rabbit, White Rabbit

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Performance Date: April 7
Primary Language: English

“White Rabbit, White Rabbit, White Rabbit” is an expression used when people are sitting around a campfire. It is used to get the smoke out of one’s face and by repeating these words, the smoke will change direction. The concept is that the smoke is made up of hundreds of minuscule white rabbits. They only go in your face because they don’t feel appreciated and want attention. By saying white rabbit three times, you acknowledge their presence and therefore, will leave you alone.

The informant learned this folk expression through Boy Scouts. It is exactly the type of silly thing that would be made up by kids. The informant heard it from an older scout while away at camp. They still practice it to this day because it shows a fun, non-serious side.

It seems to me that it is a childish solution presented for a childish problem. Many kids enjoy camping or at least are forced to participate in it. Kids are very focused on the moment, so something like smoke in their face would upset them greatly. This “solution” turns this problem into a fun game that holds, in theory, real-world significance.

Childrens Magic Trick: The Disappearing Bracelet Knot

Nationality: Peruvian-American
Age: 12
Occupation: Student
Residence: Miami Florida
Performance Date: 4/20/19
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Background: The performance is a magic trick, a form of slight of hand that uses a hair scrunchie or similarly elastic bracelet, the informant (RW) learned it on the playground from one of her friends.
RW: It’s so cool!
MW: What do you like about it?
RW: When you do it right everyone gets really excited!
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Context: Informant(RW) is a 12 year old student who’s interests include spending time with family, and riding bicycles. RW shared this particular magic trick with multiple members of her family during their annual Passover Seder, in this case RW, her sister, and I were getting paper from the garage so that RW’s father could teach us to make paper airplanes when she asked to show me a magic trick.

Performance:
RW: Ok, ok, so first you twist the rope like an 8 on your wrist
RW: You do that and you see this part? [RW points to the loop formed by her bracelet]
RW: The under part [she gestures to the under side of the bracelet], and you pull that part into the little circle but not too tight.
RW: If you flick it really fast the knot disappears!

Steps to reproduce:
1)Twist a section of the bracelet into a loop
2)Take the underside of the bracelet a pinky length away from the loop and pull it through to make a knot, loosely
3) Flick the end of the bracelet that sticks out of the knot and it disappears
——————————————————————————————————————–
Analysis:
The trick is a way to “get one over” on one’s peers and even adults. Thus the child demonstrates “magic” that they know to be a reflection of their own knowledge. The informant’s pride is the key marker here, this piece of folklore is a performance passed from person to person for the benefit of the people around them. Likewise this is a display of trickery, the goal is to fool, and thus in harmless deception traverse the social taboo of lying. This gives the performer the space to engage in a behavior that is generally seen as wrong in a way that will actually net them praise.

Great Grandmother’s Murder House

Nationality: American
Age: 38
Occupation: Writer
Residence: LA
Performance Date: 4/21/19
Primary Language: English

Storyteller: “So my mom’s entire family is from New Orleans, which is essentially the most haunted city in the world…like there is so much tragedy and everyone…like if you grew up there you kind of believe in ghosts? Like you pretend you don’t but you do. No city can have that much tragedy and death and not have stuff wandering around. So my great grandmother had this really nice house. And I remember like being…sort of with it enough as a kid to be like ‘we are not rich, how did she afford this really nice house.’ And it was because it used to be a brothel and there was a murder there and so my family got it really cheap. So it was a murder house right? So the story was that one of the women that worked int he brothel was married. And her husband came in and dragged her up to the attic and they had a huge fight and he killed her. And there were these dark stains on the floor up there that everyone said was blood stains…that would not come out. Whether they were or not I don’t know, but that’s what I know this story was. So, basically they would always tell us that ‘Herald’, essentially, used to live in the attic because it’s where he killed his wife. And we were like ‘yeah whatever. Ha ha. Very funny.’ So my cousins and I are upstairs one day and we are playing in the attic and all of this weird crap starts happening. Like a door slams and a window that like…things like open and not a problem open and like weird weird stuff. And so we were like ‘oh you know what it is. It’s uncle M, he’s trying to scare us…because my uncle was notorious for scaring the kids all of the time. So we were like, ‘it’s just him.’ And then we were like ignoring it and then I looked out the window and my uncle M was downstairs. And we literally screamed and ran downstairs as fast as we could [laughs]. And to this day…NO explanation for what was happening in that attic. We were like ‘maybe it was like the uncle? or whatever…’ but could never prove that it was another human in our family.” [seeing my disturbed face she adds] “Yeah…it’s very upsetting! [laughs] I did not enjoy that! But yeah, that is the story of my great grandmother’s murder house.”

 

Background: The storyteller is from the south (specifically New Orleans) and she got to spend a lot of time growing up there. As a result, she not only has a lot of knowledge on the stories people told about the city, but she also had her own personal experience with a ghost in her great grandmother’s murder house.

Context: I asked her if I could interview her for this project. I knew that she was from the south and after collecting a couple stories from people who grew up in the south, I was fascinated with them and wanted to hear more. She gave me three stories…one of them included this first person narrative of her experience with what she still to this day believes was a ghost. I met up with her and another storyteller for coffee to go over the details.

Thoughts: Like the storyteller already pointed out, New Orleans is famous for being one of the most haunted places in the world. There really is so much tragedy that has occurred in that city throughout the years that it is not hard to believe that there are many ghost stories and legends that derive from it. It is scary to hear and see things out of the ordinary especially when we cannot figure out the realistic cause of it. Many people refuse to believe in such things as ghosts and live in denial with the fact that they may be real. Some things that cannot be explained frighten us.

The Green Lady

Nationality: American
Age: 27
Occupation: Manager at Auxiliary Services
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/23/19
Primary Language: English

The informant is marked IN.

IN: There’s this one spirit, called the green lady, who wanders around this botanical garden, that I think has water or like some kind of pond in it. She has green scales and jagged teeth, very Shape of Water, and her hair is made up of seaweed, and so the story goes that she had visited that garden with her children and one of them got lost and drowned in the lake. Because of that, she died with a broken heart and is apparently supposed to roam that area, in search of her child. And anyone visiting this garden is told not to leave their kids alone, because the spirit will like, take them as revenge or a consolation to her own child, you know.

Context: I asked the informant at work if he had any Hawaiian folklore tales he could remember.

Background: The informant is Hawaiian, with Japanese-American family. He heard this story around from locals in the area around this botanical garden.

Analysis: I think that this story is very similar to La Llorona in nature. It also functions as a story to tell children to get them to stay with you while visiting this area, as it will scare them to be alone with a fish-like spirit with jagged teeth.