Tag Archives: Christmas Eve

Peppermint Pig

Nationality: Italian American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Woodside, CA
Performance Date: 4/8/2017
Primary Language: English

Informant:

Dina is a college freshman from Northern California, she comes from a large yet close knit Italian family.

Piece:

Informant: So every christmas eve my entire mom’s side of the family gathers to celebrate and we have this one tradition we do every single year. Its called um… the peppermint pig. And we take this…. We have this peppermint pig and you’re not… it’s wrapped in a velvet bag and you’re not allowed to look at it. You aren’t allowed to take it out. And after dinner we all gather around the pig and everyone takes turns hitting the pig once with a silver hammer from youngest to oldest. Take your turn, hit the pig. And then once everyone has gone, which is like 20 people, you open the bag and there’s all these fragmented pieces of a peppermint pig and you HAVE to eat a piece for good luck for the next year”

Collector: Do you have any idea where that tradition comes from

Informant: No clue

Collector: Why is it lucky

Informant: It just is. yeah it just is It just gives you good luck. Everyone has to, my aunt won’t let anyone leave the room unless we all eat a piece.

Collector’s thoughts:

What most interested me about this piece is that the informant has no idea of where the tradition came from, but is still adamant that it gives good luck. She stressed the fact that everyone has to eat a piece of the pig for good luck. When asked why the tradition is luck, the informant replied in a confused tone, not understanding why an explanation for the luck was necessary

 

 

Feasts Natalae

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 3/15/2016
Primary Language: English

Background: A.S. is a 22-year-old student at USC studying Occupational Therapy. She was born and raised in Los Angeles, and both of her parents are professors at USC. The informant’s mother told this story to the informant multiple times, especially when describing her childhood or her favorite holiday. This was her mother’s favorite time of the year, because it was the one time that she could be all together with her family and celebrate, even though they were Jewish and the tradition revolved around a Christian holiday.

Main piece: “My mom was born in Rome but grew up in New Jersey. Her mother was Italian and she was also Jewish…which is interesting since there aren’t too many Italian Jews. Anyways, she still celebrated Christmas because her father was raised Catholic. So my grandmother would prepare a traditional Italian meal for Christmas in the house when they lived in New Jersey. It wasn’t like other Christmas dinners in the states…it was like specifically Italian. So they would have a bunch of courses, seven I think, because of the seven sacraments or something, and almost all of them included some sort of fish plate, but no meat. I think my mom told me it was called um.. oh it was called Feasts Natalae. It was traditional in Italy to have the dinner on Christmas eve but it was still called Christmas dinner I think. Each course was fish because it’s like a kind of fasting…they just don’t eat meat. My mom said this was a really special time for her because she knew her family would be together. And it wasn’t even about the holiday or religion or anything, it was about being with her family.”

Performance Context: I interviewed the informant while we were both together, sitting on a couch, in the house where she lives on west 28th Street in Los Angeles. Feasts Natalae would typically be practiced on Christmas Eve, and is a prominent tradition in Italy. This tradition would be practiced by Anna’s mom’s family every year.

My Thoughts: I think that this story is representative of the fact that each culture and each family has a different way of celebrating Christmas, both culturally and religiously. Each nationality and each individual family has a way of making the holiday special for them. There are a lots of Christmas traditions around the world that aren’t officially coming from the church, but are still important to families and have to do with Christmas.

Christmas Eve Festivities

Nationality: American
Age: 52
Occupation: Homemaker
Residence: Dallas, Teexas
Performance Date: March 15, 2016
Primary Language: English
Language: n/a

“Our family gathers at our home on Christmas Eve. Um we exchange gifts before Santa comes and usually have a really nice dinner like tenderloin, followed by a birthday cake for Jesus and all the kids gather around and sing Happy Birthday to Jesus and blow out the candles. And they we use, use isn’t a good word, but we use Christmas crackers, and everybody stands around the table and pulls the crackers. Usually in the cracker is a hat and toy and a joke in each cracker. So everybody shares their joke and puts on their hat, and this is usually right after dessert. And we do this just kind of to have fun I guess. And then Kate usually performs a concert and plays Christmas carols. And that began about ten years ago, and all three kids would play in the concert because they played piano, but as the other two dropped out of piano, Kate was the only one who kept it going. And a cousin played once, but Kate is the only one who plays now. It pretty much just adds festivity to the celebration.”

 

Informant: The informant is a fifty-two years old, a mother of three. She is of Irish, French, and German descent, and was born in Chicago. She moved to Dallas when she was three, and she is the oldest of three children, with a younger brother and sister. She is an active member of the Catholic Church.

 

Analysis:

 

This particular holiday ritual is interesting because it is similar to a birthday party. I think that this is due to the fact that the family is Catholic, and therefore recognizes the true meaning of Christmas as the birth of Jesus. Therefore, they celebrate Christmas Eve as they would celebrate the birthday of a family member. Every family member gathers together as they would at a birthday party, and they even have a birthday cake and sing happy birthday to Jesus.

This reaffirms that this time period, Christmas Eve, is a liminal time, as Jesus is brought into the world. The magic that surrounds the beliefs about Santa and Christmas Eve are incorporated in the family gathering and sharing of presents, while the Catholic teachings are kept in mind and celebrated as well. The blowing out of candles by the children can represent making a wish as children would for their birthdays, but doing it for Jesus.

In addition, the use of the Christmas crackers is interesting. Everyone is able to partake in the silliness of this practice by putting on a hat and sharing a joke. This brings the family closer together in celebration. It is also a very childlike performance, reaffirming the likeness of this celebration to a child’s birthday party, which is true to the Catholic meaning of the holiday.

Also, the concert that is put on by the children supports this as well. The children are able to demonstrate their skills and entertain the adults by playing the piano. Although only one child continues, who happens to be the youngest in the family, it is still representative of the festivities of Christmas Eve as childlike. This honors the birth of Jesus as a newborn child, by making the ritual of Christmas Eve as celebrated by this family as like that of a child’s birthday party.

Christmas Eve Pyjamas

Nationality: Canadian
Age: 57
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Vancouver, Canada
Performance Date: April 11, 2016
Primary Language: English

The informant is my mother, who was born and raised in North Vancouver, Canada. She has two older brothers, and both of her parents immigrated from the United Kingdom when they were adults. She worked in accounting until she retired at the age of 50. She is widowed and has two children: myself and my brother, who has Cerebral Palsy.

This relates to a Christmas tradition where everyone in the family is given a pair of pyjamas on Christmas Eve, while the rest of the gifts are opened on Christmas Day.

“The pyjamas came from Kerry [informant’s sister-in-law]. That was started by Kerry, Kerry had that as a tradition in her family and she, uh, told me about that one and now we include it as a tradition with our family, um for you guys so we all got up on Christmas Day and we all had nice little new jammies to be worn for getting our photos taken in.”

So, what exactly happens with the Christmas pyjamas? Could you explain it as if to someone who had never heard of this?

“Well, what happens with the Christmas pyjamas is that, of course when you’re little, you’re all excited about having a present to open, and when you’re going to bed on Christmas Eve, you’re looking at, you know, the tree, and you know there are presents from your family and you know Santa’s coming, but we used to always let you guys open, or the kids, open one present on Christmas Eve. The thing was, is that they knew exactly what the present was going to be after the first couple of years cause it started to become, “Okay, yeah, know what this is now.”

But it was still the idea of having something special to open up on Christmas Eve and that was opening up the pyjamas and having that little ritual and it almost became… um, if it is to be not pyjamas, that would have been not good—it had to be pyjamas after a while, because that’s what one wanted, was just another new pair of pyjamas to put on in that evening. And that actual tradition got picked up by another family when they heard me telling them about that tradition and now they do it as well. And Anne and Brad [informant’s friends] do that with Robyn. And someone else I know started that tradition after I was telling them about it, but I started doing it because of Kerry.”

And why pyjamas?

“Why pyjamas. Well, so you’ve got something nice and new to sleep in that night, and then when you wake up in the morning and you’re doing all your unwrapping of presents and they’re taking pictures, you’ve got your nice new clean pyjammies. So you look cute!”

Analysis:

This tradition ties into the larger Christmas present tradition, and combines the “open on Christmas morning” scheme with the “open on Christmas Eve” scheme. I find the picture justification interesting as well; in a sense, it coordinates and moderates the children’s wardrobe. Additionally, allowing the children to open one present early might help take the edge off of the children’s excitement for presents, which would give parents a more quiet and peaceful night’s sleep, giving it a strategic element as well.

This was one of my favorite traditions when I was younger, and I intend to continue it.

Mexican-American Christmas Eve

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: USC, from Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/30/15
Primary Language: English

EXAMPLE:

ANALYSIS:

My informant tells me that despite her ethnicity, she does definitely not associate herself as being culturally Mexican. It is telling then that despite these claims, the part that she associates with the most in this tradition are the Mexican foods and treats that her family indulges in. Clearly tamales, Mexican chocolate, and the special breads do not make their rounds frequently, but when they do they are welcomed with open arms and mouths.

It is also a tradition that celebrates the liminal moments – the moments of transition. They open the gifts together at midnight on Christmas Eve, the moment when it exactly becomes Christmas. They celebrate that together. I also think it is interesting that they have the child transitioning to adulthood as the one who distributes the presents. It is a form of initiation and celebration for that person who is growing up. He or she is the center of attention for that moment.