Tag Archives: Christmas tradition

Christmas Saran Wrap Game

Text: “At Christmas, we did a saran wrap game. Where it’s just like you get a pretty big bowl and add presents into the bowl. Once their in the bowl you wrap it in saran wrap in multiple layers. Then you time everyone, and you have to unravel the saran wrap, like really quickly, so that you can get gifts. Which you want to do because you want because you wanna get the big gift in the middle, but then there’s a bunch of other tiny things like candies and stuff around it, and that was always really fun.”

Context: When discussing Christmas traditions with AL, they described a holiday tradition their whole family would participate in. Grabbing a big bowl with an array of presents, some small like little toys and candy, but with the addition of a bigger wrapped present in the center of the bowl. The bowls for each family member were wrapped multiple times in saran wrap. Everyone then is timed to see who can unwrap their bowl the fastest. They are additionally motivated to get to the center of the bowl so they can get to the big present.

Analysis: This tradition shows how families can turn something simple like gift-giving into a game that everyone gets excited about. The saran wrap game adds competition and urgency, since everyone is racing against time to unwrap their bowl and reach the bigger prize in the center. At the same time, the smaller items like candy keep it fun along the way. Because everyone is doing it together and reacting in the moment, it creates a lot of laughter and energy, which makes the experience more memorable than just opening presents one by one. It highlights how adding a playful challenge can make holidays feel more interactive and bring people closer through shared excitement.

A Friend’s Family Tradition: Christmas Pajamas

Context:

Informant K is a 20 year old USC student majoring in Narrative Studies. She is from the Seattle area in Washington state. K was born in Boston, MA, moved to San Francisco, CA, and then to Seattle at age 3. Her extended family is from parts of Canada and, though her immediate family is not religious, K’s grandmother is Christian. K is a sophomore and has been living in LA for 2 years.

We exchanged folklore as a group during a designated time in our discussion section. We went around in a circle, and this was one of my friend’s stories.

Text:

K: “Mine is also a Christmas tradition. I don’t know if this started with, like, earlier back or if this was a ‘my parents’ kind of introduction or invention but we do Christmas pajamas. So every year on Christmas – on Christmas Eve – we get to open one present. And that is our Christmas pajamas. And it always starts with my mom being like ‘Go look under the tree!’ like ‘Go look for your pajamas!’ And so they’re usually not – I mean sometimes they’re set out? When we were younger it was more like we got to root through the presents under the tree and find our Christmas pajamas and the tag always says, like, ‘Happy Christmas Eve! Love Mom and Dad.’ And then we open them and they usually have a fun little pattern on them, like sometimes they’re candy canes. The ones I got last year were a little less christmassy it was more just animals in a Wintery forest. And my sister and I – we used to get like strictly matching ones, now we get more like coordinating ones. I think as we’ve gotten older, my mom was like, ‘Okay, I’ll give them a little bit more… like I’ll tailor this a little bit more to their personal styles.’ And then we have to go upstairs and we have to try them on and we do like a little mini fashion show for our parents and she’s like ‘Oh, yeah! Those look nice!’ And then we take a picture, usually in front of the tree and you have to go to bed wearing your Christmas pajamas. I don’t think that’s a hard and fast rule but, like, I would never take off my Christmas pajamas ‘cause that would feel like an insult to my parents, and also it just makes it fun and festive.”

A friend, also in the circle: “Is Christmas pajamas just you and your sister or do all of your… do your parents also get…?”

K: “I don’t think my parents get pajamas. I don’t remember if they did at one point but from what I can remember now it’s just me and my sister.”

Interpretation:

What K is explaining is a clear tradition – something contemporary that is done each year. I find it intriguing to discuss costumes or outfits as tradition, because wearing them is inherently a kind of performance. K also mentions ‘showing off’ the pajamas to her mother in smaller ‘fashion show’ performances. Her tradition is observable and fits the general description of one, yet it’s debatable in its references to the past or source material, as K doesn’t actually know the origin. It’s also worth noting that K takes this tradition very seriously – she wouldn’t dream of changing out of the pajamas. As far as I can tell, K’s tradition seems rooted in Americana. Matching pajama sets date back to the age of the nuclear family, so it’s fitting that this is a sibling tradition for the informant. Wearing matching clothes for holidays specifically is common, but I would argue that doing so for a Westernized version of Christmas is a way of creating tradition for an originally religious holiday when the participant isn’t actively religious. It’s a conspicuous example of that which is popular in an immigration-heavy society like the United States. To create a tradition is to strengthen identity, because those who participate in tradition are then considered part of an in-group.

White Elephant Ritual

Text: “My family organizes a big white elephant on Christmas Day that everyone is involved in. Everyone brings a present and then everyone exchanges it.”

Context:

The Informant is a student at the University of Southern California, speaking with admiration and nostalgic reminiscence as these memories are recounted.

“My extended family on my dad’s side mostly live in New Jersey, and they’ve grown up there. And every Christmas we spend Christmas with them. We have like a designated path where first we go to like this aunt and uncle’s house for the morning, then we hit like this aunt and uncle’s house for dinner. But at the first place, we do the white elephant. And the significance of this is that my family is huge. My dad has seven siblings, so there’s a lot of people involved in this white elephant. And it kind of takes up the entirety of the first half of the day. And these items become recurring things that people will just have with them whenever we see each other.  And they’ll like, kind of have memories from years before, like, oh, remember when this person got this. So it actually is like an event of Christmas. And often times it’ll be like references to family jokes or just like family things. Like my family watches It’s a Wonderful Life every single Christmas. And then one Christmas people got Bedford balls and It’s a Wonderful Life shirts, just like so interesting and niche. I think as I’ve grown older, I liked it a lot more because, I’ve felt a lot more part of my family. And it feels like we’re reinforcing that we’re all part of a group and that we’re actively keeping it alive through traditions, not just seeing each other, but caring about each other, like wanting to have individual connections with each other. That’s a family. I think white elephant can be fairly common, especially with friend groups. I have heard of other people doing this tradition, but I don’t know if people do it as consistently. Like this is my family’s white elephant.  When people are kind of thinking ahead of time of what to bring like what has been mentioned, what has been joked about over the past year at family gatherings, like, yeah, it’s very topical to the year kind of like the past experiences of what’s been happening. So it feels like a recap family thing. I think maybe when I was younger, I wasn’t super aware of it. And then as I became older, yeah, I think we’ve been doing it like every single year.”

Analysis: This white elephant tradition is an example of a ritual that is performed in celebration of a holiday. It is considered a ritual because of its nature of being performed at a certain time, planned, commemorating Christmas, among the same group of people. There is little distinction between the participants as audience and performer because each person takes on each role at certain times. The white elephant ritual specifically is an example of people having ritual license, where they act in ways that are not normally acceptable. This can be seen in how participants are allowed to steal others’ gifts and give ‘gag’ gifts that hold no real value. Despite the white elephant ritual being a widely known game especially in the U.S., many families and groups like the Informant’s can find personal significance in performing the ritual.

Christmas Ornament Ritual

Text
K: “Okay, so during, um, Christmas time, whenever my family puts all the ornaments up on our Christmas tree, or like, we decorate the Christmas tree, we have two ornaments that we always put on in a specific order. So we have the pickle ornament, which goes on second to last, and then we have this little clip-on, like, cardinal ornament, and we always put that on our Christmas tree last.”

Me: “Is this something that your parents explicitly taught you, or did you kind of come up with it as a family, like it formed organically?”

Kae: “I can’t really remember, but every time that we do it, like, nowadays, they’re always like ‘remember! Don’t put the pickle on the tree or the cardinal on the tree because they go on last!’ So I guess they kind of remind us.”

Context
K is a current student at the University of Southern California. They spent most of their childhood in Chicago, Illinois before their family moved to North Carolina, where they currently live when not in school. K stated that they believe the tradition started with their immediate family and has been going on for over a decade. K said they felt it was for fun, but that the ornaments were ‘special’ to them and their family. When asked to elaborate, K explained that the cardinal ornament in particular was something that their parents had bought and that belonged to their parents, which attributed it a special quality for them. As for the pickle, K explained how they had heard that “sometimes people put a pickle in the Christmas tree. Which is where the pickle ornament might come from.” K did not indicate that the pickle ornament had any specific significance to their family outside of it being part of their tradition. They also did not indicate why the pickle or cardinal were placed on the tree in their given order, but noted that doing so gave a definitive sense of the tree being completed.

Text
As K suggested, this seems to be a seasonal ritual that indicates the official ‘closing’ or end of the decoration of the Christmas tree. By using the same, specific set of ornaments each time, K’s family all receive a clear visual signal that their decorating ritual is complete. That the cardinal ornament — the last ornament to go on the tree — is an ornament that seems to hold special sentimental value to K’s parents helps to further underscore themes of family and togetherness that typically characterize the Christmas season. It is also interesting to note that, according to K, the representation of the pickle may stem from another set of folk practices that have now been incorporated into a different context, showing the adaptability and evolution of folklore.

Italian American Christmas tradition

Text:Every christmas eve the informant goes to this italian restaurant called Maggianos and then goes to look at christmas lights. Every christmas morning before they would open presents they would eat breakfast, caramel pull apart rolls, biscuits and gravy, fruit salad, and orange juice. Then they all go to Olympia (He lives in Seattle) and sees his step dad’s family.

Context: The informant is religiously Jewish but his mom is Christian so they celebrate Christmas as a family with his moms side of the family, since his parents are divorced. It holds no religious significance to him though he said he loosely knows the story of Jesus. He enjoys gift giving and it’s very important to his mom who is religious. His mom is 100% Italian American but she briefly converted to Judaism while his parents were married and has since returned to Catholicism. This tradition started a couple years after the divorce happened when he was around 10. 

Analysis: These practices highlight the adaptability of holiday customs to accommodate personal beliefs and family histories. Although Christmas holds no religious significance for the informant, the holiday is embraced as a valuable time for family bonding and gift-giving, which are significant to his mother’s Christian beliefs. This blend of traditions: Italian American, Jewish, and Christian illustrates the complex ways in which individuals and families negotiate their identities and cultural legacies through shared celebrations. The food made by the mother, which isn’t Italian cuisine, shows the cultural assimilation that has happened in the family, adopting things they like form the environment around them. He still feels very strongly about celebrating it even though there is no religious meaning to him. It shows how holidays do a lot more for cultures than honoring a religion, they help meet vital psychological effects for those that participate in these cultural practices by providing a sense of belonging and community.