Tag Archives: collections

Thanksgiving Ornaments

The informant is a student in university who has spent the entirety of his life in the United States, starting various different traditions that she has the ability to experience due to family members building upon their values.

Ritual/Ceremony:

On Thanksgiving, the United States’ annual national holiday, the informant, her family and extended members join together to “share [their] love with one another by bringing [their] Christmas earlier in the year.” The ceremony that takes place accompanying the traditional Thanksgiving feast and activities includes the “exchange of an ornament on Thanksgiving because we often won’t be able to be together during Christmas but we get to carry a reminder of them on the tree.” This is typically done “after the meal ends, giving each other the ornaments, symbolic of our love on Christmas eve and day, is mainly for the extended family members who we don’t get to see on the most chaotic days of the year”.

Context:

The informant states that this tradition has existed in her family since “[her] brother was 5 so that was 13 years ago” and was a very important ceremony that played a “unique part of Thanksgiving day” as it was “more symbolic than the turkey was to [them]”. She had also expressed that these ornaments were usually personalized according to each family member and their interests, specifically over the course of that year. Examples of this in her family exist through an ornament that she received years ago that was “Nemo themed because it was my favourite movie as a child” and that resonated with the rest of the family as they put it on their tree for that Christmas season. Ornament ceremonies had a certain dynamic and were typically done between specific individuals most of the years with an exchange of “the older generations giving the younger generations personalised ones” and the entire family giving the elders “a collective personalised one” from their descendants. This can be seen through her family giving their grandfather a wooden ornament because of their “family memories and love for nature.” She summarises her experience with the ceremony as a “matter of how we can share our love with unfortunately not being able to be in the same space as each other” on Christmas day.

Analysis:

This unique ceremony being done during Thanksgiving presents a different approach to the traditional holiday by implementing the effects of the religious/community holiday of Christmas together. The mix of holidays in a familial setting embraces and highlights the true impact of these holidays on the informant and her family, placing her family in an important position in their lives. Although it is not a generational tradition that has existed for decades, it emphasises the significance of this tradition to the informant herself and her siblings. The personalisation of the ornaments presents the beginning of a narrative of sorts as she is able to collect the personalised ornaments she has received over the years to show the growth in her persona and values as a human. Besides this allowing the family to celebrate the family essence that they do not have on Christmas with the ornaments received on Thanksgiving, it also supports the ideology of feeling extreme gratitude on Thanksgiving. Spreading the “love and family joy” all year round as they prepare for the year ahead of them, with the ornaments piling up over the years symbolizes the impacts of implementing this ceremony onto Thanksgiving. It allows the informant to have grown up feeling connected to her extended family which is evident in the manner she has expressed the importance of family in her life, missing the ones who are not there for Christmas Eve.

Collecting the tabs off Levi’s jeans

Context:

KR lives in Seattle, WA, but grew up in Windsor, Ontario in the 70s and 80s. He remembers this custom that he never fully understood from the youth he grew up around.

Main Piece:

KR: “I just thought of another one from childhood. One was that everyone was convinced that if you somehow collected the tabs off Levi’s jeans, somehow you were gonna get paid for it. So like there’s this thing where people where people were cutting the tabs off- and cutting the tabs off other people’s jeans ‘cause it was, and like there were extra points for the orange one versus the red one. But no one could ever explain to you what you were supposed to do with these tabs after you had them as far as I could tell. So that one was very strange.”

Analysis:

I have searched the internet and have not been able to track down any other mentions of this custom (or perhaps more of a trend?). As Levi’s has been a long established brand and their jeans are high quality and last for a long time, the longevity of the clothes has become prized. Therefore, Levi Jeans tabs are often used by vintage shoppers and collectors to date the manufacture of the jeans, as determined by the color and graphic design arrangement of the tab. However, this trend does not align with this typical use of the tabs, as removing the tabs from the jeans negates that purpose entirely.

There are multiple angles of analysis that I would use to start to understand this phenomenon. The first is simply that humans like collecting things, and that once your friends start doing something, you may join in simply as a social activity. While the mysterious promise of payment may have been false, the competition within social groups creates incentives to collect more, and better, tabs than others in the social circle. Contributing to this is the idea that certain colors of tabs (presumably rarer colors) were worth more ‘points,’ and the fact that even those who did collect the tabs were not able to explain how their financial end goal would be achieved.

Another interpretive angle to examine is the American entrepreneurial spirit. While KR did live in Canada, Windsor is directly across the border from Detroit and as we know, national borders don’t stop the bleeding of culture. And even without that bleed, Canada is still a western capitalist country, which still implies the teaching of profit motives. This trend of collecting tabs cut from Levi’s jeans was propagated by children and the youth, people who are generally economically dependent and not in a position to work full-time jobs or financially support themselves. The prominence of the Lemonade Stand in popular culture demonstrates how the drive to accumulate money is one taught early, and one that is not easily satisfied as a child that cannot realistically engage in the market. Just like the lemonade stand, this tab collecting is a hobby that promises a monetary reward, satisfying that urge to earn, or at a deeper level, to succeed within the value system of western capitalist society.

Folk Object: Thimbles

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Nationality: American
Age: 59
Occupation: Manager
Residence: Santa Monica, CA
Performance Date: 11 April 2010
Primary Language: English

Thimbles were once given by young men or boys to young women or girls to display their affection and feelings for them without proposing serious commitment or marriage. Thimbles could be regarded as toys or novelties. Deborah was first given thimbles by her grandmother. Later on when she was stationed in Korea, she started to receive thimbles as gifts from people because she expressed to them that she didn’t have much room and was living in a small apartment. She now owns over 350 thimbles in her collection. Her oldest thimble is from medieval times; her second oldest dates back to 1720. Deborah takes great pride in her collection and claims that she is just a beginner in comparison to other thimble collectors. It appeared that she had a story for each thimble. She feels that the history of thimbles helps one feel what women’s role in society was for the last three centuries.

I was unfamiliar with the expansive history of thimbles. It is fascinating that this folk object was used for more than protecting one’s fingers while sewing. Jewelry when given to a woman by a man was believed to be a serious commitment; when men wanted to demonstrate interest in a woman, but not make such a commitment, thimbles became the perfect alternative because at the time every woman would have known how to sew and would have done so regularly.

Annotations

The idea of thimbles as a folk object and novelty is documented in The Story of the Thimble, along with a history of the thimble.

McConnel, Bridget. (1997). The Story of the Thimble. Pennsylvania: Schiffer Publishing