Tag Archives: christmas

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.

Christmas in Kentucky

Nationality: American
Age: 58
Occupation: Programmer
Residence: Carlisle, MA
Performance Date: 3/19/2013
Primary Language: English
Language: French

Informant Bio: Informant is my mother.  She was born in West Virginia and spent her childhood moving around the country, eventually settling in Massachusetts.  She was exposed to many different traditions as she moved around the country as a child and still carries some with her to this day.

 

Context: I was interviewing my mother about traditions, stories and rituals she remembers from her childhood.

 

Item: “Our family was spread out across the US and Christmas was the one time that everybody went back home to be together, back in the Kentucky hills.  As a child I loved being with my many cousins.  It was a fantastic time.  We generally stayed with my paternal grandparents.    My grandmother woke up early Christmas morning and started preparations for the large Christmas breakfast.  Always consisting of biscuits, gravy, fried potatoes, eggs, sausage, fried apples and for the kids, my favorite – hot molasses and peanut butter sopped up with a biscuit!  After breakfast, the children opened presents.  Then my grandmother began the Christmas dinner.  They had a huge table; yet, the kids ate in the kitchen.  Actually, you were allowed to eat at the grown up table after you turned 13.  It was sad for me, when my older cousins left the kitchen table!  Dinner was incredibly good.  My grandmother and mom were terrific cooks.  After dinner in the afternoon, the kids got to play with the toys.  Then we began visiting other families in the community”.

 

Analysis: The Christmas breakfast was the first moment that all of the family members got to be together for; it was a celebration of the family being back together again.  The informant remembered the food the most vividly, maybe because the meals proved to be the most memorable times (when everyone was gathered around tables seated next to each other).

 

The fact that the children had to sit at a separate table until they were thirteen shows how, in the U.S., society truly separates childhood from adulthood.  With different schools, laws, and expectations, children do not get to have the privilege of a full life experience until they are old enough.  Thirteen years old seems a little young for the transition when compared to the voting age of 18, drinking age of 21 and other “marking” periods that occur much later in ones life, but, thirteen does represent a time in which most people have at least begun to hit puberty (and thus moved on from being a true child).

 

Christmas seemed to be a period of time that was sacrosanct.  Nobody missed it and it was a time when everyone came together.  The children were the ones who exchanged gifts while the adults merely treasured it as a time to be around their loved ones and catch up.  Despite the religious nature of the holiday, Church/religion does not seem to play a significant role in the informant’s celebration.

Advent Calenders

Nationality: English, Irish, Scottish
Age: 80
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Chatsworth, CA
Performance Date: April 20, 2013
Primary Language: English

Every December, my family puts up stitched pieces of cloth on a wall in our hallway; one for each family member. Our advent calenders have small, wrapped gifts occupying each day leading up to Christmas. Each day we gather together and unwrap our gift from that rung on the calender. On Christmas Eve we unwrap our last advent calender gift, contributing to our Christmas spirit and anticipation for the following day. Knowing that my grandmother (my father’s mother) contributed, I asked her where the tradition started. Through email, she answered:

“The advent of advent calendars (little joke there) isn’t as far back as one would think.  Advent isn’t really from December 1st to the 24th (it can start as early as late November, or as late as December 3rd), but this is when it’s traditionally celebrated now.  The German Lutherans used to count down the days of advent by putting a mark each day on a door, or by burning a candle.  Some handmade calendars began appearing about 1850, but it wasn’t until around 1902 that a German stationer came up with the paper calendar with little doors to be opened each day, with a picture or scripture behind them.    Now they can be paper, wood, cloth, or other materials.

I couldn’t find anything about the beginning of the cross-stitched calendars with the little rings for attaching wrapped-up objects, except that they seem to have started in Scandinavia, where embroidery is so beautifully done.  As I checked out some photos of completed–and loaded!–stitched calendars, they all seemed to have CANDY tied to the rings.  Now, why couldn’t we have started out with that custom, instead of little gifts???

We used to take family trips to Solvang, and as far as our family custom goes, my mom (your Grandma Thelma) found the needlework kits at Thumbelina’s Danish Needlework shop there.   She bought and worked three of them:  blue for Uncle Chris, red for your dad, and beige for Uncle Jeff.  She finished them, bought all the gifts, wrapped them and tied them on, and brought the calendars to our house the evening of November 30, 1963.  Chris was 8 years old, your dad 6, and Jeff 3.  You can imagine the excitement the next morning when the boys discovered this wonderful new treasure trove!  You can imagine my excitement around November 15, 1964 when I realized I was now responsible for 72 little wrapped-up gifts!  I have to give my mom credit, though–she helped not only buy the gifts, she also came over and helped wrap and tie every – single – one – every – year.

Friends who had kids saw my kids’ calendars, thought, “What a good idea!,” and asked if I’d make calendars for them.  I loved to cross-stitch (still do), so happily complied.  It escalated, and I was “commissioned” to stitch calendars for friends of friends, co-workers, neighbors…finally teenage friends of my kids, and at last Jina, your mom, and Nancy, too, and then:  GRANDCHILDREN!   A rough count says I’ve made at least 40 of them.   At first I bought charts, but ran out of printed ones, so used other designs, and finally made up my own.  I did not stitch your calendar, nor Allison’s nor Nic’s–your mom did all of them–and then Tyrel’s!  The last one I did was Bailey Johnson’s, and I didn’t finish it until she was 12 years old.  At that point I said, No more, never, not ever!  And I meant it.  When you have children, their grandmother can stitch their calendars.

I have a calendar of my own.  Some of the kids I had made calendars for decided, when they were in their late teens or early twenties, that they would make me one.  A girl named Louise made a rough draft, and Jeff designed it and graphed it (I swear, he should have gone into that business), and they all passed it around and worked on it.  Gini, Janet, Ron and Imrie, Michael, Jina (I don’t think your mom was in the picture yet), Louise–it’s HUGE, and it’s wonderful!  Have you seen it?  It hangs year-’round behind my bedroom door now.

I shop for the gifts all year.  In fact, I’ll find things in December for the following year.  Discovering just the right thing is the most fun shopping I do.  So please don’t say I’m gracious for providing the Little Things for the grandkids’ calendars:  I’m joyous, is what I am!”

 

Advent calenders provide families with an opportunity to gather regularly.When my sister got married, my mom making an advent calender for him was a way of inducting him into our family. He was able to share in the family tradition and spend time with us opening gifts everyday. Holidays are generally a familial time, and advent calenders provide a nice reminder and build anticipation in the days before Christmas.

 

The following is a picture of the original three advent calender’s that Thelma made for her three grandsons, Chris, Tim (my father) and Jeff.

Cross-stitched

Chris, Tim and Jeff's