Tag Archives: christmas

Mochi Soup

Nationality: “Half Japanese, half Korean, so I am Asian.”
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, but born in Fresno and lived there until starting college
Performance Date: April 30, 2014
Primary Language: English

Informant’s self-description: “I am a large melting pot of everyone that I have ever met. Even if I did not really know who they were. And that makes me me! And different from everyone, ‘cause we all have different experiences. I am a video game person that loves a video game, and I love things that aren’t actually real life. But I also like real life! But sometimes fiction more so because the boundaries of what can be done are expanded. And that’s really cool to me. I like food – a lot. And I am a person that just wants to do a lot of things all the time. Forever.”

 

 

Are there any traditional food dishes that you consume or make on particular occasions?

Um, yes. Every New Year’s – well, Christmas and New Year’s, but because they’re so close together they just kinda happen in that sort of time slot. Christmas, my mom always makes this certain rice cake soup, it has – or mochi soup – and she prepares it all day, and then she makes the soup, and we have to eat it for dinner. And she adds eggs, and green onions, and seaweed, and we all sit down and we get special silverware and bowls out, and eat that for dinner, and then on New Year’s day, you have to eat the same thing, or you have to eat the mochi soup. It doesn’t have to be the exact same one from before because that would be nasty. But it would be like a new batch – the same recipe, obviously. And then you have to eat it for good luck in the New Year. And if you don’t you’ll have bad luck. But I haven’t experienced that yet because I’ve never turned down a bowl of my mother’s soup. Because why would you. Yeah- that’s the only sort of traditional thing that we have in my family.

You’ve always had mochi soup –

Since I can remember, yeah.

Do you like it?

I like it a lot. I kind of want it now.

Have you ever helped make it?

Uh, yes. Actually, I forgot a part of it- Once we were old enough, my mom made me and my two younger sisters – we made little dumplings, or I guess gyoza in Japanese. Little dumplings with pork and spices and meats and vegetables. We make the dumplings, and that’s a thing we always have to do on Chistmas and New Year’s Eve. Then my mom puts them in the soup and you can see all the little dumplings that you’ve made and usually we make really weird shapes. So sometimes you’ll get a nice little round moon shape and then you’ll get, like, a rectangle, and then they fall apart and you just have to have dumplings in your soup everywhere.

Do you try to make them into particular shapes?

Sometimes yeah, sometimes yeah. I tried to make a snowman dumpling once, and he kinda looked like a malformed sugar snap pea after. I was sad.

Was there a reason for the snowman?

I mean, it was Christmasy, sort of, and I was like “Oh, if we can shape dumplings, that’s sort of like shaping cookies when we make them for Santa. So I can just like form this with my fingers,” and then it fell apart, because she had to deep fry it and he was just kind of sad. And ripped apart. But it was ok, because it tasted delicious.

You helped make the dumplings – your mom makes the rest of it?

Mostly. It’s a pretty basic process, just making the broth, and then she throws in the little dumplings and the rice cakes. But she’s a very excellent cook so I wouldn’t want to disrupt anything in her kitchen – she’s a gale force wind when we step in and she’s not expecting us. It’s a danger zone.

Is it just your family? OR a tradition that many other people take part of?

I think it’s a Korean – well, Korean / Japanese tradition. My mother’s side of the family is Korean and it’s what she does, it’s what her side of the family does, but my baa-chan, or my grandma on my dad’s side who is Japanese – she always comes over and it seems like it’s something that she does too. She lives alone, and right next door to us, so she always comes over for all family celebrations. So I assume that it’s maybe just like a Far Eastern – Asian sort of deal. Maybe. I mean, it seems that way. I met a couple other families who do the same thing, Japanese or Korean.

Is there any symbolism to the food? Like the rice cake part of it?

I don’t really know. I feel like rice cakes in general are just kind of important to – maybe not the Korean culture so much as the Japanese culture because my grandma, my baa-chan, she sometimes throughout the year – she’ll just be making large things of rice cakes. Just in the kitchen. And there’s no reason for it, she’s just doing it. And I’m like “Ok…!” And there’s just like a lot of rice, and a little machine going around that like smashes it and whirls it around and stuff. But I think specifically would be for Japanese holidays and New Year’s and Christmas. But I mean she kind of just does them whenever.

Do you speak fluent Japanese?

I don’t, I unfortunately speak neither of my family languages. I know how to say very basic things.

 

 

Informant gives lots of background to the mochi soup. Informant sounds fond in description, and it makes them think of the family they love.

Fruitcake on Christmas

Nationality: USA/Australian
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/24/14
Primary Language: English

This informant is a student at USC.  His dad’s side of the family is Australian, originally colonists from England.  I asked him if his family did anything uniquely Australian.  At first he said his dad didn’t bring many Aussie traditions or practices over to the US other than his accent, but then he was able to tell me about a Christmas-time tradition that his grandparents had held for generations.

Every single Christmas my Aussie grandma makes fruitcake.  The shit is really gross and I don’t know why anyone eats it so after I tried it I had to ask why she makes it every year.  First she laughed and said she really does like it, but then she told me what she knew about its historical significance.  Apparently when England was colonizing Australia they used to send these fruit cakes over with people on the ships because they lasted longer than regular cakes. But those were plum cakes, which were boiled and the fruitcakes that my grandma makes are baked so it’s not really the same.  I’m not really sure how they got associated with Christmas but that’s how they got to Australia.  My grandma literally makes her fruitcake like a month before Christmas because the fruit has to marinate or something.  I have only been Christmas there twice, but I still can’t believe my dad and all the other Aussies there actually eat it.

So it looks like these cakes originated as travel treats for the colonists and maybe stuck around after that to remind the colonists of home and the long hardship they endured to make it to Australia.  In modern day fruitcake is probably just taken for granted and generally enjoyed by the masses during the holidays.

Festivus

Nationality: Jewish-American
Age: 24
Occupation: Student, Part time facilities attendant at on campus gym
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/27/13
Primary Language: English

The Informant provided the following when asked to describe a tradition in which he took part:

So, every year, instead of celebrating Christmas, some families celebrate the holiday of Festivus, which is, um, basically,you get a giant metal pole, and, like that’s sort of your…. and you decorate that kinda like a tree, and you eat spaghetti and meatballs, and you have an airing of grievances, which is, you can you sit down at the table with everyone and you get to stand up and you get to just say anything you want about anybody in the room, like that’s been bugging you or whatever without any repercussions this one time of the year you can do that, and at the end of the night, the last thing you do is the oldest member of the group wrestles the youngest member of the group, and that goes until the youngest member can pin the oldest member… and that is the festival of Festivus, which is a Christmas… winter? holiday.

The informant said that every year, his fraternity celebrates this festival, and he takes part in it. Although he admitted it is originally from the popular sitcom Seinfeld, making it originally fakelore, it has since taken on a life of its own, being practiced with much more detail and variety than was originally included in the television show from which it developed. Festuvus serves as a secular alternative, or simply an addition, to the Christian Holiday of Christmas, and seems to draw on both traditional and pagan themes to create a winter holiday which will appear to a wide youth demographic.

Kookaburra Christmas Song

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: March 16 2013
Primary Language: English

Hannah’s Aunt lives in Australia and would visit Hanna in California every other year for Christmas. It was a tradition after Christmas dinner to sit in the living room and play games and sing songs together. One year, her Aunt changed the lyrics to the Kookaburra Song and sang it to everyone. After that Christmas, it became a tradition that every year her family would sing the Kookaburra Christmas song. The song went like this:

Kookaburra sits in the Christmas Tree
Merry, merry Christmas king of the bush is he
Laugh Kookaburra! (*everyone would laugh) Laugh Kookaburra! (*everyone laugh)
What a life you lead

Kookaburra sits in the Christmas Tree
Merry, merry, merry Christmas bird is he
Sing Kookaburra! (*everyone would sing ahhh) Sing Kookaburra! (*everyone sing)
Sing your song for me

Kookaburra sits in the Christmas Tree
Eating all the sugar plumbs he can see
Stop Kookaburra! (*everyone would yell stop) Stop Kookaburra! (*everyone yell)
Leave some there for me

Kookaburra sits in the Christmas Tree
Counting all the elves he can see
Stop Kookaburra! (*everyone would yell stop) Stop Kookaburra! (*everyone yell)
That’s not an elf that is me

Hannah and her family continue to sing the Kookaburra Christmas song every Christmas even without her Aunt. The Christmas adaptation to the song is a unique way of taking a cultural song from Australia and integrating it into a fun family song that Hannah’s family can sing that symbolizes Christmas.

White Horse Ornament

Nationality: American
Age: 60
Occupation: Banker
Residence: London
Performance Date: March 19th, 2013
Primary Language: English

“Your mom always lets me hang up my horse on the tree. She always puts up the tree and decorate the tree, but the horse is always left for me. She always had the brown horse and I always had the white horse, and so leaving the white horse always left me contributing to the tree just a little bit, so we could still do it together.”

This is a tradition enacted in the informant’s household every year since he was married in 1981. The informant and his wife would always want to decorate the tree together, but over the years when she quit her job to take care of their children, she often would decorate the tree at some time during the week while they were at work. Because it was a tradition that they decorate the tree together in preparation for Christmas, she always left him the white horse as a way for him to participate in decorating the tree (other than aiding in bringing the tree into their house). The white horse was important to them because they got the horses as a set, and therefore had meaning to them as a couple rather than just as individual ornaments. Tree decoration is a family activity, and this tradition has spawned so that everyone in the family always has at least one ornament that they put on the tree themselves if they will be there for that year’s Christmas.