Tag Archives: marriage

Thai Wedding Traditions

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.

 

Weddings in Thailand most of the time happens in one day. But there are different approach es depending on the size of the family.

Okay if you have a small family sometimes you would just go to the government building, you know like city hall here, and just dress semi-nice and get married there. They will sign the paper and then be done with it.

Bigger family usually dedicate the whole day for this event. Oh, way before the wedding day there are usually a lot of stuff the bride and the groom would do. Usually the bride will find her dress…usually people do both traditional Thai clothing in white with the western wedding gown type of thing…The bride and the groom would then have a photo session where they take photos in their wedding clothes in some nice place…some people do it at where they met, or a park, or a photo studio and what not. Some people even do different wedding themes…sometimes even casual clothes…some people even do their old school uniform you know…it really depends on the couple.

On the actual wedding day the day would starts with the groom and his family marching with money, food, and valuables to the bride’s house. Oh, the wedding usually takes place there. The groom and his group of people would sing songs as they march along. The size of the march depends on the groom’s family, friends, and relatives. They would have some Thai musical instruments. It’s like a marching band you know some wind instrument, drums, etc. And then these songs would be songs you only sing on weddings. The songs usually talks about how wedding is this idea of trading between family…the lyrics would be like “if you have lemons, you can trade for lime, if you have a daughter, you can trade for a son”…it’s kind of funny but most people still do it today.

Once the groom arrives he is faced with what we called “gate.” These “gates” are usually made by children of the bride’s family holding a string on two ends prohibiting the groom to see the bride. The groom would then have to give the children envelop with money inside. The number of “gate” depends on the number of children in the bride’s family. Sometimes the friends of the bride would set up the “gate” as a dare for the groom where he has to do jump rope, drink weird stuff, or push-ups to pass. It’s almost like a prank.

After that then the groom can see the bridge and the ceremony will then start. The two will be on their knees in front of the invited guests… And then the bride and the groom put their hands out on top of a small pedestal where the adults of both family pour water into their hands…while pouring the water the adult give consent, advice, and wishes to the bride and the groom…This usually begins with the oldest family members to the youngest. Sometimes close elderly guests participate as well.

After that the bride and the groom can sign the marriage papers stuff. Sometimes you can even book the government officials from your district to be at this event so they can bring you the paper to sign…so you know you don’t have to go to city hall to sign before or after the wedding day…so everything can happen on the same day.

There is also certain district with good names that people want to get married in. The most popular is this district called “Bang-Rak” which translates to something like “area of love” or “place of love” or you know something like that. This district is so popular that people would go there to get married even though they live like an hour away.

Oh, usually after the traditional Thai stuff the bride and the groom would change into the more Western wedding clothes…you known tux and gown…for their wedding reception with dancing, food, and cake.  

This is a common Thai marriage tradition observed by the informant. The march with valuables represents the groom’s family size and wealth. It also symbolizes how these valuables is the bride’s price, or how much the groom is paying the bride’s family. The march differs in scale from less than ten people to about a hundred. The “gate” serves the same purpose to present obstacle for the groom and how he must have wealth to get the bride. And that the value of the bride come at a price where the groom must be willing to pay and does to get to her. The adults play an important role as they give consent and pass on wisdom to the next generation. Having the oldest member of the family start the ceremony also reflects the value of the elders in the Thai culture. This is also a ritual where both sides of the family can get to know each other, especially the older generation, to create the joining of two families.

Since there are many religions practiced in Thailand, sometimes the wedding takes place in multiple forms to accommodate different believes. The informant said that since the traditional Thai wedding ceremony ritual stems from Buddhist traditions, those usually occur in the morning with close family. Then the reception will take place at night where all invited guests, family and friends, attend. The reception is then host more similar to the American wedding reception with food and music, and the wedding cake.

 

 

This wedding ritual, in my opinion, reflects how the importance of marriage transcends the bride and the groom. The march of the groom singing songs involves a small community. It shows how so many people have to come together for the two people. It also shows wealth and connection within the community. The dare by the bride’s family shows how her strong family ties and emphasizes this idea of trading the bride through money and wealth. The kneeling before adults shows the importance of the older generation to the new and upcoming generation. The ritual shows how the importance of the wedding day focuses as much on the people around the bride and the groom in comparison to the bride and the groom themselves.

Without the traditions the bride and the groom can just go to city hall and get married legally as the informant pointed out some small family would do. But I can see the importance of the wedding becoming an event that is for the micro-community. The legality of the day is much less importance than the traditions performed on the day.

The different traditions also show how the local tradition is infused with the international tradition. Having both shows how the people want to keep on their tradition while being open to new ones.

The photos taken before the wedding seems very strange in my opinion. As seen in many wedding traditions the day is deemed as very exclusive, sacred, and sometimes religious. The clothes that the bride and the groom wear at wedding are also exclusive to the day. I feel that to take photos before the actual day in wedding apparel loses the importance of the actual wedding day.

Who’s Got the Dumbest Husband

Once there were two women who had very stupid husbands. One day they made a bet to see which one of them was best at fooling her husband.

When one of the men was lying in bed feeling a little under the weather, his wife convinced him that he was dead. He was so dumb that he believed her, and he laid himself out so that he looked dead. His wife dressed him in burial clothes and put him in a coffin. Then she got everything ready and invited people to his funeral.

Among the funeral guests were the other woman and her dumb husband. When this husband had started to change his clothes of the funeral, his wife convinced him that he was already dressed! He believed her, and went along to the funeral in his birthday suit.

Afterward, the rode to the graveyard carrying the “corpse” to his grave while he lay in his coffin, peeking out. There was a small hole in the coffin, and through it he could see his neighbor walking stark naked in front of the funeral procession. After a while he couldn’t hold out any longer, and he burst out laughing. One just can’t bury a laughing corpse, so everyone had to walk back home again.

Analysis:

This story was also from a series of Swedish folktales, focusing on marriage relations. There is no true hero or villain in the story, only a comedic tale of wives and husbands, in which the wives are portrayed as the clever, good-natured tricksters and the husbands as shameless simpletons. The situations presented are ridiculous and hard to believe, but they would provide the target audience with ample amounts of humor, despite the fact that the story itself is relatively short. Children who heard the folktale wouldn’t fully understand the dichotomy between wives and husbands in marriage, but this story allows them a little preview of what the future holds. There are inter-couple and intra-couple competitions, to begin with. Also, the tale proves that one can’t shouldn’t take oneself too seriously, as the husbands are not shown to feel particularly embarrassed, and it also stresses the it’s important, or at least, better, to be clever than a fool, regardless if one is a woman or a man.

It is peculiar that the “joke” of the wives’ ends because “one can’t just bury a laughing corpse.” It’s not that the corpse was not a corpse at all, or that the wife felt sorry for the husband, but it was a socially unacceptable act to bury a non-somber body. It may simply be the writing or translation, or the style of the folktale itself, but I still found it interesting that the townspeople had to walk back only because the corpse was laughing, making it seem as if they would have had no problem burying the stupid husband alive.

 

Collected from:  

Blecher, Lone Thygesen and Blecher, George. Swedish Folktales and Legends. New York: Pantheon Books, 1993. Print.

Wedding Ring Test – Pregnancy Gender Predictor

Nationality: Chinese-American
Age: 51
Occupation: Manager
Residence: Shanghai, China
Performance Date: 4/20/13
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English

Informant: “This is how you do it. Take a pin, needle, or wedding ring and attach it to a thread. Then you hold the dangling item over mom to be’s belly while she is lying down. If the needle or wedding ring swings in a circular motion, you will be having a girl. If it moves in a to and fro motion like a pendulum, you will be having a boy.”

Me: “Did you try it?”

Informant: “I did and it worked for me! But it’s just an old wives tale.”

Analysis: This is a very common thing to do when one is eager to know the gender of one’s baby. It was thought to originate in Italy, except instead of a wedding ring, they used needles on threads. Due to female roles back in time, needles and threads were more common in an expecting woman’s life than nowadays. Using the wedding ring as opposed to the thread was thought to originate in Ireland.

Pregnancy is one of those exciting events, and the gender prediction always arouses the curiosity of others. There are several “old wives tales” on predicting the gender of a baby, however some of them contradict each other. According to testimonials online, people will often end up with an even split of results -50% of the tests will predict a boy, and 50% will predict a girl. This suggests that there is little truth or evidence to support the effectiveness of the tests, which may be why the informant was skeptical to believe in it despite the fact that it worked for her.

Unfaithful Women in Cameroon

Nationality: Cameroonian
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/25/13
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Many women and children wear wraps around their waist—kind of like when people tie towels around their waste, but we call it a “wrappa”—and if a woman’s wrappa falls off in public she has believed to have committed adultery. I’m not sure where the origin of this was, but I guess they thought that if your rappa was loose enough to fall off, then you’re a whore or a prostitute because you need to get it on and off easily. In the times that this belief was serious, the woman as usually stoned in the middle of the village—stoned to death—or was just shamed into leaving the actual village, so this offense is very serious because I come from a polygamous area, and adultery is seen as the most humiliating thing you can do to your husband and his other wives and their whole family.

 

 

Polygamy is not something that American’s understand very well. We are a monogamous culture. However, like in this village in Cameroon, adultery is taken very seriously here. Not only does it violate religious code but it violates moral code as well. As opposed to in Cameroon, women in the United States are not physically abused for their transgressions. However, it does seem more socially acceptable for an American man to be unfaithful to his wife. While women have gained much more equality over the years, there still remains this male-dominant atmosphere that stigmatizes women being unfaithful—men can do it, but a woman is called a whore if she is unfaithful.

 

I find this belief to be quite ridiculous. Just because a piece of clothing fits loosely on a women does not mean that she is more sexually “devious” than the women who wraps herself up tightly in her clothing. Say the weather is unbearably hot: why would anyone want to wear anything that fits tightly around his or her body? I find it incredibly stupid that this is this becomes something by which people can judge women and accuse them of being unscrupulous or immoral.

Marriage

Nationality: Armenian
Age: 59
Residence: Glendale, CA
Performance Date: February 23, 2013
Primary Language: Armenian
Language: Russian, English, and French

Form of Folklore:  Humor

Informant Bio:  The informant was born and raised in Yerevan, Armenia until 1990, when she and her family moved to the United States (Glendale, California), at the age of thirty six.  Most of the folklore she has been exposed to is founded in Armenian culture.  Her social surroundings in Armenia and her father are her primary sources of folklore.

Context:  The interview was conducted in the dining room of informant’s house.

Item:  Armenian Transliteration – Mihat jahel hars ka vor shat mutahokvatsa amoosnanaloo masin.  Voroshuma vor gna ira tatiki mot vor hartser ta amoosnootsan masin.  Hartsnooma “Amoosnootsoonu vontsa?”  Tatiknel asooma iran, “Ari, nusti, bala, ameninch kasem.  Amoosnootsyan arachi tas tarin, dook amoosin yev kin k linek; myoos tas tarin, unkerner k linek; myoos tas tarin, koor oo akhper k linek, heto, yerkoo koor k linek, verchi tas tarin, k kirvek te ova mets kooru.”  Harsu asuma, “Bayts tati, du hitsoon tarits avel es amoosnatsats, ova mets kooru dzer mech.”  Tatiku juptooma oo asuma “oves kartsoom?”

English Translation – There’s a young bride who is very worried about getting married.  She decides to go to her grama to ask her about marriage.  She asks, “What’s it like to be married?”  Her grandma tells her, “Come, sit, my dear, I’ll tell you everything.  The first ten years of marriage, you will be husband and wife; the next, ten years, you will be best friends, the next ten years, you will be brother and sister, the next, you will be two sisters, and finally the next ten years, you will fight over who is the older sister.”  The girl says, “But grama, you’ve been married for more than fifty years, who’s the older sister.” The grama just smiles and says “Who do you think?”

Informant Comments:  The informant believes there is a lot of truth in this joke.  Being married for over thirty years, she thinks that the knowledge that the grandmother passed down to the young bride was very true.  She believes that, in marriage, the two people grow very close the way that two siblings would grow close.  Along with the closeness come more quarrels, hence, the fight over who is the big sister.  This folklore has become a humorous way of telling brides (in real life) about what marriage is truly like.

Analysis:  This folklore illustrates how marriage is viewed as a journey of two people who slowly evolve together and develop a close bond.  It is interesting to note that the husband is the one who becomes a sister, not the wife becoming a brother.  It seems that this is an indication that the female plays a dominant role in the relationship; especially considering how the grandmother smiles at the end of the joke and in doing so implies that she is “the big sister”.  The mild humor of what is said by the grandmother shows that even after more than fifty years of marriage, she is able to look upon her journey with her husband and find humor throughout each passing decade.