Tag Archives: christmas

Hungarian Christmas

Nationality: Hungarian/Italian/American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Morristown, NJ
Performance Date: March 10, 2015
Primary Language: English

The informant is a 20 year old girl who grew up in Morristown, New Jersey. Her mother is Italian and her father is Hungarian.  When asked about any Hungarian customs she participates in, she told me about a family tradition at Christmastime.

Informant: Hungarians do christmas differently than we do here.  The tradition is that instead of geting all of your presents the day of, you get them all the night before.  Also, instead of Santa, baby jesus and his angels are the ones who fly around and give presents. Called Jesuska- little Jesus. He and his angels fly around, so what you have to do is going in the basement… I’m not sure if this is how all people do it, but for my family… we go in the basement and wait until we hear the bell ring and that means Jesuska has left and all the presents are under the tree.

Me: Why do you think Hungarians do this instead of Santa? Which do you think came first?

Informant: Santa is a Western thing.  It all came out of christianity, we know that, but this tradition definitely started before the whole commercialized thing.

Me: How long have you been doing this for?

Informant: My dad and grandparents all did it when they were young, and my brother and I have been doing it our whole lives

Me: Until what age did you believe that Jesuska was actually visiting your house?

Informant: Uhh, I stopped believing around 4th grade.  Same time as people stopped believing in Santa. Luke [little brother] still fully believes. He is all about it.

Me: Did you know about Santa too?

Informant: Yes, I also believed in Santa. I never put it together when I was younger that it was the same thing. It never conflicted. Jesuska is what all my family on my dad’s side talked about and Santa was what every else talked about. They were totally separate.

My analysis: There are dozens and dozens of different ways that people celebrate Christmas.   Because it is such a widespread holiday, it is as if different cultures needed to find a way to take some type of ownership over it and differentiate their celebrations from others. What is unique about the informant’s experience is that she simultaneously partook in two traditions from two different cultures and never felt any conflict between them. This is despite the fact that they essentially satisfied the same needs of getting presents under the tree. One tradition is not any more special or important than the other to the informant, they are simply different, representing different parts of her family. Great example of the way that traditions may be changed and modified for a future generation of people who are the children of marriages between parents from different nationalities.

Christmas Tradition

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Charlotte, NC
Performance Date: March 20, 2015
Primary Language: English

The informant is a 21 year old girl, and one of my closest friends. She told me about a tradition she takes part in at Christmas time every year.

Informant: So, every year, the day before Christmas, since we were little, my mom acts like she is the elf…  And puts out Christmas presents and rings a little bell. We all run into the living room, and there are presents. And they are our Christmas pajamas to wear so that when we wake up we are all matching in Christmas clothes.

Me: You used to think it was an elf though?

Informant: Oh, definitely I used to think it was an elf.

Me: And then she told you?

Informant: Well it was her handwriting.  Back when I thought it was the elves, I really thought it was them. I pictured them as the little ones, you know? Little guys with green and red hats and little outfits with little boots. Like the size of… a pencil… that height.

Me: When did you start practicing this?

Informant: As long as I can remember.

Me: When did you figure out it was your mom?

Informant: Probably in 4th or 5th grade I figured it out.

My analysis: When I first heard this story, I was not very drawn to it.  Christmas is somewhat the “go to” topic when talking about different traditions. Looking back, though, that in and of itself is what makes it so interesting. Once I interviewed another informant (transcribed under: Hungarian Christmas), I ended up coming back and rethinking this tradition.  Both of the informants talked about a very very similar Christmas tradition, but one learned it at her home in North Carolina and the other in Budapest, Hungary.  The concept is the same: some figure puts out presents the night before Christmas, a bell is rung, and kids can go see those presents the night before. Which one of these cultures started practicing this first is beyond me, but the fact that they all do gave me a newfound appreciation for something I originally did not think much of.

Christmas Tradition

Nationality: African American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: March 25, 2015
Primary Language: English

Informant H is 19 years old and was born in Inglewood CA, and moved to a place near Valencia just outside of LA soon after she was born. After 5 years, her little sister was born, then her little brother, and then her youngest sister. The family then moved to Bakersfield. H homeschooled for many years and then transitioned into a public high school.

H: So in my family, I guess it started when we moved to Bakersfield, so we had to start over basically, so we had to get a new tree, and like new decorations. So we started this tradition where every Christmas we go and like as a family, my mom, my dad, me, my little sister, my little brother, and my youngest sister, so as a family we go and we find, in our city, a Christmas ornament and everyone gets to pick one Christmas ornament. And we do that every year and now our Christmas tree has so many ornaments on it because we’ve been there for about 10 years and so that is something we do every year.

Me: So do people pick the same type of ornament? Do you have like a style like ‘oh I pick the dancer ornaments…’

H: I guess my littlest sister…she always picks stuff like sparkly or pink so you know those are her ornaments. My brother picks like shiny cars and dinosaurs. So I guess we all sort of pick stuff that reflects our personality maybe what were interested in at the time. Like I have one that’s a cowboy boot from when I rode horses.

Me: So does it serve anything more practical than just oh we need to get ornaments for our tree?

H: Oh definitely it’s something we can depend on for Christmas time being together and we do this together as a family. And also it’s our tree in our house and all these ornaments aren’t random we hand selected each and every one, and they reflect us.

Me: So in a way when you look at your tree you can see your family…that’s really cool do people ever comment on the ornaments?

H: Oh definitely people are like ‘oh that’s a cute ornament’. And were like ‘oh there’s a story behind that’.

Me: So do a lot of the ornaments have these individual stories with them?

H: Um a lot of them do I know a couple fights were started over a couple ornaments.

Me: Care to share any fun stories about any of them any of the fights…?

H: Okay well there is this one this chandelier ornament it’s silvery and it has crystals on it. So we were going to the place, I think it was World Market, and my little sister saw it and she was like ‘Oh that’s like a cool ornament’, and she keeps walking because she wants to keep her options open. And then my other sister sees it and she’s like ‘oh my gosh I want this ornament so much’ and then my youngest one obviously plays the whole, ‘I’m cute I’m the youngest I should get this ornament’. And then the older sister was like ‘I should get this ornament because you always get the sparkly ornaments’ and the littlest one said ‘No I should get this ornament because I always get the sparkly ornaments’. And just like so much chaos. And eventually my little sister broke into tears and we’re like ‘it’s Christmas time you can have the sparkly chandelier ornament’ so there’s always this like bitterness when it’s time to pull out the sparkly ornament. And they always fight about who gets to put it on the tree. It’s very ridiculous. I think it’s hilarious.

Me: That’s so funny, do you all put your own ornaments on the tree?

H: We do. Sometimes people will forget because there’s so many, people like forget which ornaments are theirs, so like fights ensue because of that.

Me: I’m sure it still brings all you together though.

H: It does it’s fun times.

Me: Is it sort of interesting being away at college now? Are you the oldest?

H: I’m the oldest.

Me: So does that change any of the dynamic? Do they have to go pick ornaments without you one day? Because I know I usually get home right before Christmas, is that ever a problem…?

H: Well sometimes they have to put up the tree without me but sometimes, I think last year, they left all my ornaments there. Or they wait for me to come home so we get all of our ornaments together. So yeah they definitely want to make it a whole family.

Me: So sweet. Do you guys go to the same place every year?

H: Yeah we usually go to World Market, but sometimes we go to other places but they always have awesome really cool individualized ornaments.

 

Analysis:

H’s family definitely emphasizes them being together to celebrate this holiday with their own special family tradition. Even though an argument might have come from it, this tradition serves to bring her family closer together, especially now that she is living away from home. The tree is a way to express themselves all individually while still celebrating their family as a whole.  This tradition might be even more important for their family as their children start moving away from home to go to college, so this tradition of coming home for Christmas and doing this tradition as a family might become more special over the years.

CHRISTMAS STOCKINGS

Nationality: Irish-American
Age: 54
Occupation: Environmental Government Employee
Residence: Boston, MA
Performance Date: 3/25/15
Primary Language: English

ABOUT THE INFORMANT:

My informant is a mother of three who lives just outside of Boston with her husband of over 30 years. She is originally from Cape Cod, the part of Massachusetts that is full of beaches and is a world known tourist destination. She is a lover of all thing water; she has worked extensively in water policy and water pollution as an environmentalist.

EXAMPLE:

Interviewee: My dad never did any Christmas shopping for anybody. He always left it all to Mom. As he got older, I guess he got much more free time. He would spend all year going to flea markets. Just searching for Christmas gifts. Sometimes something would catch his eye and he would not even know what it was. The year I ruptured my Achilles tendon playing tennis, I got Tennis For Dummies.

He would just give everyone a massive bag full of stuff. A bag for each person. All this cheap stuff he found at these yard sales and Salvation Armies; sometimes it was thoughtful, but most of it was crap.

It was the worst for the people dating into the family. When Lynn, my sister-in-law, first starting coming to the family Christmas, she got all these random things that no one knew anything about. Weird pieces of wood. A styrofoam ball. But she just took it and said thank you, trying to be polite, while he was just laughing because he knew that he gave crap. But then she surprised us all one year when she turned around and glued it together and created a figurine. Then she gave it to him.

We would come home with so much crap, we couldn’t keep it all, but I do have a farting Santa doll.

Interviewer: What about when he got sick?

Interviewee: When he passed away, we wanted to keep it alive. It was so much fun. We couldn’t all give everyone presents; that was just too much. But we all picked names and gave personalized stockings with funny and outrageous, sometimes nice, gifts to the person.

Interviewer: And you still do it?

Interviewee: Yeah, I mean, no one wanted to give it up. It is hard though. It is all tailored to them. There are no gift certificates. You have to really go out and think about them. It’s nice, even if it is crap. It’s crap tailored for them. Thoughtful crap.

ANALYSIS:

There is so much stress around Christmas. It clearly has become so overwhelmingly commercial and impersonal, that I feel like what her father was doing was almost the anti-version of that. Not to be a hipster or part of a counter culture or whatever, but because that’s what he wanted to do. He wanted to give hand picked crap. Just for the joke or shock. Because he was such a strong figure in this family and because he would not stop doing it, it became a tradition.

When he died, that is when it took on a whole new dimension. Not wanting to give him or it up they modified it, so that people kept getting these personalized stockings. Even though he was gone, the stockings and laughter did not have to go. That is most likely the sentimental aspect of it. On a practical level, it is a really good way to make sure that people get gifts for Christmas that feel as though they were personally chosen for them. An added benefit.

 

Christmas exchange

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 30, 2014
Primary Language: English

“On my dad’s side of the family there’s about 50 people. He’s the youngest of 7 kids and they have kids and even they have kids. So it’s like three generations of people. We use to do a gift exchange where we drew names with a price limit according to the generation. But now we have a new tradition where we donate to charity instead. We keep the same price limit, $40 for my dad’s generation, $30 for my age group and so on. So like my generation would pull $30 from everyone in that age group. Each age group pulls their collections into a group. And then each year, it rotates between the seven siblings, their family decides where the donations go to. So this year will be my dad’s ‘turn.’ My dad and mom will choose where their age groups donation is going to. And then my brother and I will pick where the money is going to for the collection from our generation.”

I find this tradition interesting because in the last few decades, with globalization there has been a movement towards more humanitarian actions. People have become more aware through media of human rights, health issues, natural disasters, and other struggles communities and groups are facing. This family tradition of my roommate reflects this awareness. Because her family is made up of so many members they are able to make a sizable contribution. They are definitely focusing on the theme of giving during the American “holiday season” and not of receiving. It goes against what the Christmas tradition has morphed into with the consumer culture that has developed in American and Western society. It’s also great that they involve the younger generations as well and teach them this selflessness from an early age.