Tag Archives: food

Christmas Eve Dinner (Danish-American)

Nationality: Danish-American
Age: 20
Occupation: College Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/19/13
Primary Language: English

The informant describes how his Danish family celebrates Christmas each year in San Francisco.  The informant details the Christmas Eve dinner and a game involving rice pudding and an almond at the end of the meal.  The informant explains that he learned this tradition from his Danish family and has partaken in the tradition every since he was a little kid.  The tradition of the dinner has sentimental value for him because he has done it for so long with his family.

The informant explains that his Danish-American family celebrates Christmas Eve in a distinct fashion.  The family always has a roasted duck for dinner and after eating the duck the family always eats a bowl of rice pudding, but plays a game along with the eating of the pudding.  The family places an almond into a large bowl of pudding and the goal of the game is to pass the bowl of pudding around with each participant taking one scoop of pudding until someone finds the almond.  The participant who finds the almond typically wins a prize.  Traditionally the prize was marzipan, but the informant explains they do not eat that anymore because it does not taste good.  The trick of the game is to do your best to keep it a secret if you have found the almond because you want to make your other family members continue to eat the pudding without them knowing the game is actually over.  The informant explains that he actually added a variation to the game by putting in two almonds into the pudding without letting the others know.

I find the Danish celebration interesting as it varies largely from the celebration in the United States.  There are apparent Danish adaptations to the celebration of Christmas as seen with the roasted duck meal and the rice pudding game with the almond.  I have never heard of either of these practices in traditional U.S. Christmas celebrations.  The games give possible deeper insight into the traditional food eaten within the Danish past and how they play games.

Korean Holidays

Nationality: Korean
Age: 24
Occupation: Student
Residence: Daegu, South Korea
Performance Date: February 9, 2013
Primary Language: Korean
Language: English

This story was told to me by my friend who had come from Korea recently. It was the day right before Seollal and I wanted to know more about how it was celebrated in Korea. He had experienced this tradition every year for all of his life, and he had learned most of what he did from his parents and grandparents. In telling me how they celebrated the New Years and “Thanksgiving,” he also informed me of what it meant to him personally. He said that he believed these properly reflect how you should be thankful to nature and to your parents. Both of these holidays involve filial piety in that you honor your parents and the ones who came before you. You thank them for providing for you, and you thank nature for being bountiful as well, providing for your own needs. He believed that these holidays were also a very unifying time. Families come together during this time period to talk about anything and everything, catching up on the latest family gossip or simply asking how other people were doing. Family is an essential part of his life, and so anything that helped strengthen the bonds that family made were exceedingly important to him.

추석 (Chuseok)

Chuseok is a traditional Korean holiday. It is celebrated on August 15th according to the lunar calendar. As a result, its date moves around from year to year according to the calendar that we use. It can be considered as the Korean equivalent to Thanksgiving, but it is also very different. Chuseok is a holiday that is meant to celebrate the newly harvested grain. It celebrates that the earth had been fertile and provided so much grain that everybody could have food for the following wintertime.

It is a very important time when it comes to family. There is a three day holiday from work, and everybody is not expected to do anything work related. Everybody goes back to their hometown from wherever they are. So what happens is that in order to celebrate, people leave on their first day off to drive back to wherever it is that they came from. It is such a big holiday, that there are even special buses that are meant for taking people back home. However, because everybody is going back to their hometown to visit their family, the traffic is really bad. It is well known that the traffic jams are impossible to the point that it takes up to 20 hours just to move from city to city. It doesn’t matter to the people though. Regardless of how many people or there, or how long it takes, people will work their way just to get back to their families.

When you get back home, you must reunite with your family. Traditionally, you will eat dinner together and talk about your lives while you have been apart. Or if you have been living together the whole time, then you talk about what it is that you appreciate most and be cheerful. It is usually a very lively party. Everyone will make a Korean dish called songpyeon. It is a dessert, and is essentially a sweet rice cake filled with different fillings. Some are made with eggs, others are made with sesame seed paste, and some are just made with sweet filling. It is a family event, and usually everybody will learn it from their grandmothers. After they make it, everybody will come together to happily eat it. It is a very enjoyable time, and will also end up being a way to wish for revitalization for the land so that it may be “fertile” once again, and that good fortune will come for the following year.

Earlier in the day, the family will go the grave mounds where their ancestors are buried. They will clean the mound by trimming the plants around it and making it look presentable. Then they will hold a ceremony that will honor the dead, hoping to placate the spirits that guard the family and have them continue to bestow their blessings. They will usually offer food up to their ancestors, and some of them will provide pleasures that their ancestors enjoyed during life. However, the placement of the food is ultimately very important. Rice and soup are placed on the north side while fruits and vegetables are placed on the south side. On the west are the meat dishes, and on the east are the drinks. They do vary from region to region, but otherwise it is pretty consistent. Some people light cigarettes and leave them in a dish nearby. Others buy liquor and pour it all over the burial mound. All of this is done in order to respect the dead.

Around dinnertime, before or after the eating, there are usually games that are played. One notable one is Ssireum, which is essentially Korean wrestling. It happens between two people, and the winner is determined based on who can push the other one out of the ring. People also have archery competitions. However, this tradition is only for the men. The girls traditionally play much more childish games, and do not really do more active things. The most noticeable thing for girls in this holiday is a dance called the Ganggangsullae. The name has no meaning; it is just the phrase that follows the verse from the song that this is danced to. Essentially, the girls of the village will hold hands and dance around in a circle. They will wear their traditional Korean clothes called hanboks, and they will just circle around singing Ganggangsullae. With all of these festivities though, the people will simply enjoy their time together and get to know their families even better.

설날 (Seollal)

Seollal is the Korean New Years. It is also placed according to the lunar calendar. It changes dates quite often, but it is usually around January to February, in line with the Chinese New Years. This is the other big holiday in Korea where people will go back to visit their families from wherever it is that they may be staying. Another three day holiday is provided to the people so that they are able to do so.

The customs of Seollal are very similar to those of Chuseok. The family will again go back to the burial mounds of their ancestors and take care of them. They will snip away the weeds and make the grass growing on top of the mounds look presentable. They will talk to the dead ancestors and make their wishes for a good afterlife for them. They will also provide food set in the traditional manner for the dead as well.

The food of Seollal is very traditional. People will eat rice cake soup, which is usually prepared with meat, rice cake, egg, and seaweed. This recipe will vary regionally, but at the very least, the rice cake part will be included. According to Korean tradition, people turn gain a year at the new lunar calendar year. They are one when they are born, and become two when Seollal occurs. However, they only gain a year if they eat the rice cake soup. That is why every year, people at it so that they can gain a year of age.

Children will be very traditional and wear traditional clothes that are called hanboks. They will bow to their parents, grandparents, and elders. They will wish them blessing and a long life with the phrase “새해 복 많이 받으세요,” which means “I hope you receive many new blessings for the new year.” The bowing is very traditionalized, as the children will first get on their knees and then bow, putting their head to the floor. Then they will get back up on their knees, and then stand one again. As a reward for the children’s filial piety, they usually receive money in beautiful money pouches. Inside the money pouches are also contained sayings and phrases that are meant to instruct the children to live moral lives, but that has become less popular in the recent days.

Then everybody plays games. The girls will play on a seesaw. Rather than sitting on it, two girls will stand on the ends of it. One will jump, and then the other girl will be launched into the air. In falling back down, the first girl will be launched into the air. It is a very amusing game, and that is how they spend their time. The boys would play jegichagi, which is very much like hacky sack in America. Once that is done, everybody will play Yutnori together. Yutnori is a board game that involves throwing sticks. You move your pieces around the board in a circle to try and make it to the finish line. However, there are two teams. Each team takes turns throwing sticks, and depending on the way they land, you must move a certain distance. If the other team throws a number and lands on the exact same spot, then the first team’s piece is taken off the board and they must start over again. It is a race to finish, as each team usually has 4 pieces. If it is not racing to finish, then it is a race to catch the other team to make them start all over again. It is a friendly competition between family members, and usually the winning team will get a monetary reward.

These holidays are celebrated very differently in America than they are in Korea. In America it’s much more relaxed and less focused on the family. Knowing that this still exists in Korea is actually very meaningful. I had wanted to celebrate the holidays with my own family, and we do—but it is not as important to us as it is to them. In addition, this also seems to reflect the religious nature of Korean people. The idea of honoring the dead ancestors is a very Confucian ideal. Personally, my family does not celebrate that part of the holidays because we are Christian and we believe otherwise. I definitely respect these holidays for being such a unifying factor between families and even between Korean people as a whole.

This appears in a children’s book:

Miller, Jennifer A. South Korea. Minneapolis: Lerner, 2010. Print.

Ethiopian wedding receptions

Nationality: Ethiopian-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 28, 2013
Primary Language: English

My informant’s parents immigrated to the United States from Ethiopia. My informant grew up in Washington, D.C., where she says there is a large Ethiopian community. She had so much to say about Ethiopian wedding ceremonies that I decided to include her description of the wedding receptions as a separate entry. This is her account:

“Ethiopian wedding receptions are always the same. They’re always really late. They’re scheduled at like, six or seven, but most people I know call it APT: Abidjan People Time. Abidjan refers to people from like, Ethiopia or Eritrea, which used to be part of Ethiopia. Um… But yeah, way more people always go to the reception than the actual ceremony. Like, two to three times as many people, because of the food. And the food is being prepared all day. So a lot of people who actually don’t go to the ceremony are like, in the kitchen all day preparing food because it can take a long tie. Like, I don’t have any family here, but my mom usually involved in that process. That’s a very social aspect of it. People usually wear… It depends on the family-friend circle that it is, but people can be wearing anything from very generalized Americanized dresses to people who do a hybrid. So it’ll be a dress made out of the same fabric, so it’s all like, cotton with the cross design. But they make it in American silhouettes, kind of, if that makes sense. Or they just wear their traditional habesha-quemis, so I have worn many of those. Usually if you’re at the age of like, fourteen, your mom is usually making you wear that. Guys don’t wear traditional clothing as much as girls do, not even in Ethiopia, because it’s just… I don’t know why. They just don’t. But my brothers definitely did when they were younger, when they were eight and under. So there’s a lot of dancing at the reception. And that’s when the bride gets up. And you’re not supposed to start eating at the reception until the bride gets there, which is really annoying especially when the bride is three hours late, which has happened before. So then… there’s a lot of dancing. It gets really loud and people get really drunk. And there’s just more socializing, and it’ll go to like, two or three in the morning. There’s loud Ethiopian music, which is very fast. I’ve never really heard a slow Ethiopian song unless it’s like, at church, but that’s not what they’re playing at a wedding. There will usually be someone there with a drum that’s basically the size of their body, and it’s strapped on to them, and when they hit the drum they’re completely turning and spinning. They throw their entire body into it. So it’s kind of like a dance ceremony. There’s one part when first all the women go out and dance with the bride, and then all the men go out and dance with the groom, and then everyone dances together. That usually happens a couple hours after the ceremony has been going on.”

Wedding receptions tend to be the time when people can let loose and truly celebrate the wedding ceremony that has just occurred. They have more relaxed environments, and people can freely express the joy of the new marriage. Ethiopian wedding receptions are no exception; they are very celebratory. My informant values and appreciates actual wedding ceremonies, but she admits that the receptions are more fun. As she said, many more people attend the reception than the ceremony for that reason—and for the food. This is another celebration in which food plays an important role, as people spend the entire day preparing food, which is later enjoyed by all of the guests. At Ethiopian wedding receptions, they serve food that the guests all recognize as being traditionally Ethiopian. For the Ethiopians who attend the weddings my informant described, this food is a comforting reminder of their country of origin. Along with the music, the special clothing, and the other Ethiopian elements, the food ties these reception attendees to their home country and to each other.

Poi

Nationality: Japanese-Korean-Hawaiian
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: May 1, 2013
Primary Language: English

My informant was born and raised in Hawaii. He talked about a particularly special food that is important in Hawaii, and then talked about how it is linked to Hawaiian culture in general:

“So poi is a very important food to the ancient Hawaiian culture. And supposedly the poi plant—the taro plant—came from the son of the main god, which is probably the sun god I believe, named Wakea. And so, supposedly when the ancient Hawaiians ate poi, it was kind of a family affair. The males were the ones to pound it and prepare it. It’s pounded out… basically you have to turn it into a paste. So you take the taro root, which is  kind of starchy, kind of like a potato. You just pound it out into a paste and add a little bit of water to it so you get the right consistency. And poi was a sacred food so nobody could be like, angry around the table when you ate poi, so it brought families together. And the way you ate poi was to take your index finger and middle fingers and dip them into the first joint of the poi bowl, and everyone would dip their fingers into the poi bowl and eat poi like that. And it was supposed to symbolize purity, or something like that, I’m not too sure. Personally, local Hawaiian culture is like… You won’t eat poi that often, it’s not quite continued specifically from ancient Hawaiian culture. So when you eat poi now, it’s generally not the same affair as it was during ancient Hawaiian days. So you’ll usually eat it with a Hawaiian meal with like, lomi lomi salmon or something like that. But it definitely hasn’t carried over with all of the same connotations to today. The production of it is dying out a bit, but some groups are trying to keep the ancient Hawaiian traditions alive. But normally now, if you get poi, you’ll just go to the supermarket and get a bag of poi. Personally, it’s kind of bland, so I don’t care for it that much, but I know people who definitely like it. I still eat it today at potlucks with my family. Generally, if people get together and have parties, we will just have potlucks as opposed to big luaus. Luaus are generally more festive for tourists who come down to have the Hawaiian experience. So anyway, the rule I was always brought up with was, ‘Bring more food than you ate.’ So we would get together and have potlucks after baseball games on Saturdays. So Saturdays would always have a giant assortment of food placed out from all different families, often including poi. But yeah, local Hawaiian culture is different from ancient Hawaiian culture. Generally Hawaiian people are kind of known to be really friendly and stuff, and to a large extent, I find that to be true. A lot of Hawaii people are generally chill. But it’s definitely not the culture you see like, on postcards.”

My informant describes how poi inherently carries a great deal of significance. There are special guidelines for how it is supposed to be prepared and eaten. These customs all promote a pleasant experience; there is no room for negativity around the table where poi is served. Eating poi is supposed to involve family and friends, so it brings people together. As my informant explained, the traditions surrounding poi are more formal when it is presented to tourists during a luau than when it is served at local potlucks. He talked about the differences between stereotypes about Hawaiians and what he actually thinks is true about locals; he agrees that locals have a positive vibe, but they don’t live life like postcards. Even so, they still make efforts to carry on some traditions, like eating poi. Although the poi itself may not be particularly tasty to my informant, he still appreciates its historical and cultural significance. He thinks that traditions like eating poi with each other help foster the kind of “chill,” positive, relaxed mindset that local Hawaiians have.

The Rice Grain Warning

Nationality: Thai
Age: 25
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: March 21st, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Thai

Informant Background: The individual was born in Bangkok, Thailand. She grew up there and still has family in Thailand. She said her family origin is Chinese. Her family still performs a lot of Chinese traditions such as: Chinese New Year, Ancestry Day, etc. Being in Thailand her family also practice a lot of the Thai traditions. She does not speak Chinese but she does speak Thai and English. She currently lives in Los Angeles to go to school. She has been travelling back and forth between the United States and Thailand constantly throughout the years because her family still resides in Bangkok.

 

My parents told me that if you do not finish every single rice grain on your plate you have to count how many you have left…Then you have to jump into the river, and every time you jump you have to make a splash sound…So it actually means you take each rice grain individually and then jump into the river again and again until your plate is empty. And every time you jump into the river you have to make a really loud splash sound. Nobody actually does this….they end up just finishing their rice. I mean the adults don’t really expect you to do it…it’s more like a threat so you finish your food.

According to the informant this proverb is more common among older generation. She grew up in Bangkok, Thailand. Though Bangkok is a metropolitan area she heard this from her parents.  It was usually for parents to say to their children when the children do not finish their food. She has heard it from some of her friend also. She said some family has variations of threat when their kids have leftover food on their plate but this is the most common one she has heard. She mentioned that the origin of the splash come from the fact that before cars were highly used it was very common in Thailand for people to live in a house near water (canals, river, and lake) where boat was their main transportation. Many of those houses near the water are farms and gardens where they value their harvests. That is what the informant believes this saying generated from.

She also said that rice is the main part of the diet in Thai food. One of Thailand main export is also rice. In a meal each individual is given a plate of rice. Protein and vegetable are then in the middle of the table as shared dishes. It is then more evident if the individual has rice leftovers on his/her plate.

 

I believe this saying is a warning to teach children to value the food that they eat and the importance to every little rice grain. It is easier to finish the small rice grain on the plate than having to take each grain to the river and jump. As the informant mentioned, Thailand is mainly an agricultural society with majority of crops grown being rice, this is to teach children that every little grains of rice is highly valued. To tell the children that they have to jump into water as many times as the rice on their plate is a reflection of the hardship a farmer would endure to grow the crops.

The informant said she also heard this phrase not from my family but from many movies and TV shows. The characters would usually say it in older movies or movies that are set in older times. Sometimes she said her teacher will say something similar in the lunchroom if students have leftover food. I agree with the informant that this is said as a threat rather as a dare. From her personal experience she has yet to hear that anybody actually jump into water instead of finishing some rice grains.