Tag Archives: Rituals

College Rugby Post-Game Tradition for Rookies

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 04/19/19
Primary Language: English

Folk Tradition:

“So I was on the rugby team and so there’s a lot of stupid little rugby traditions that exist, but there’s like 3 fuckin’ million of them. If you’re new, a rookie, and you score your first try (it’s like a touchdown) in a game or a match, after the game there’s always parties, after the game it’s always customary to invite the other team to get shitfaced with you so at the party, so after the game you have to ‘shoot the boot’. You have to fill the cleat you wore with beer and chug it, and while you do it they sing a song and they go like – yell – ‘shoot the boot’ and if you don’t do it fast enough they sing, ‘why are we waiting we should be masturbating’ you have to chug like you would chug anything.” 

Context:

This is a college rugby team’s post-game tradition. My informant watched people do it and has done it herself. 

Informant Background:

My informant is 21, from Omaha Nebraska. She is on a college rugby team at a university in Los Angeles.

My Analysis:

I think a lot of young community groups do hazing rituals as initiation ceremonies. They can be mild or dangerous in extreme cases. This is a gross, but mild initiation ceremony to the college rugby community. It makes sense that only those who score in the game get to participate because those are the people who will most likely become the leaders of the community in the future. Drinking is also a common factor in college age initiation rituals.

I think the college rugby community is relatively small compared to other college communities like Greek Life, so it makes sense that opposing teams would convene after to celebrate together. This speaks to the fact that they are more concerned about building community than competition.

Turkish Wedding Customs: Coffee

Nationality: Turkish-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: San Diego, California
Performance Date: 4/25/19
Primary Language: English
Language: Turkish

P.N. – “When Turkish girls are old enough to make a good Turkish coffee, a joke is made in the family that they are now ready to be married off.”

What happens during a traditional Turkish engagement ceremony?

P.N. – “In the actual engagement ceremony, the groom’s family sits in the living room while the bride’s family stays in the kitchen, making and preparing the food of the day.  The bride is not to sit down with the groom’s family until the end of the ceremony, because the bride is supposed to be all up, being the working woman, and that kind of stuff.”

“But, at the very end, after all the pastries are eaten and the tea is drank, you always end the ceremony with coffee.  So the bride goes in to the kitchen to prepare the coffee, and she has to carry the coffee one by one to each of the family members present, and the most important one she has to hand the coffee to is the groom.  That always happens.  She is carrying the coffee to her future husband, whether or not that is what is desired or anything.”

“If she spills any coffee onto the saucer, it’s gonna be a failed marriage, and they blame her for it.”

“That’s the whole thing; whenever I’m carrying Turkish coffee, (I used to have really shaky hands) I’d always spill it when I was younger, and my mom would always tell me I’d have bad luck.”

 

 This particular story struck me as odd, because I could tell how conflicted the person was while she was talking.  She, an extremely powerful woman, clearly doesn’t love this custom, as it’s implicit biases against women both in Turkey in general and during the wedding specifically are clear.  

 

Turkish Superstition: the Evil Eye

Nationality: Turkish-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: San Diego, California
Performance Date: 4/25/19
Primary Language: English
Language: Turkish

evil eye

What is the Evil Eye?

P.N. – “So, the evil eye protects you, your family, your household, from evil.  And this is a myth, and also a glass object.  Every [Turkish] family has an evil eye in their house . . . My family thinks that if you tell somebody something good that’s happened to you, there’s gonna be envy there.  And they’re gonna somehow will nature to get rid of that opportunity for you.  The evil eye is meant to protect you from that.  So we have evil eye’s in different parts; like, for instance, we have one in our car to prevent a car crash.”

“We have an evil eye in front of our house.  You’re supposed to have an evil eye on top of the doorway to prevent bad things from entering.  One day, during the time when I was applying for colleges, it BROKE.  I remember, because my mom thought that that was a good thing.  “It’s done it’s job,” she said.  And so she put a new one up, and I got accepted into USC!”

“Another example was this: I was wearing my first ‘sexy dress’ in high school to this New Years ball.  I had a hair piece, everything. I looked good.  I was showing some cleavage.  My aunt put an evil eye in my jacket, and said it would protect me from the boys.  I still have it there in my pocket.”

What does the Evil Eye mean to you?

“The Evil Eye reminds me of my parents, because I have always considered them to be the most superstitious people.  And I guess when I think about other types of ‘evil eyes’ in other cultures, it feels like it brings me closer to those people as well.  There’s definitely a sense of identity with everything I’ve said here.”

Immediately, this made me think of the Jewish Mezuzah, which is a similar concept to the Turkish Evil Eye.  The Mezuzah, a small piece of parchment scribbled with specific verses from the Torah, is put on a family’s doorway to prevent any bad luck from entering the home.  When I brought up the Mezuzah to this person, she smiled, and informed me that she knew of the Mezuzah already.  The evil eye is definitely something that reflects one’s culture, one’s traditions, and one’s superstitions.  It’s for this reason that I am such a fan of the Mezuzah, as well as the evil eye now; it’s because I, as well as countless other people from a number of different cultures, can relate very strongly to it.  How different can two peoples really be, when they’re unified by so many aspects of life? 

Recipe for Matzoh Brie

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student, Actor
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 4/19/19
Primary Language: English
Language: Hebrew

Ingredients:

– Matzoh bread

– Eggs

– Salt & Pepper

 

Steps

D.F. – “Some people do it differently, but my family – you start with one board of matzoh per egg, so – if you have two boards of matzah, that’s two eggs, and a bowl of warm water uh:

– First you need to crack the matzoh boards to reasonable sizes

– And then soak them in the water; wait until it’s, like, not super soft, but you could see some mush there.

– Then drain it from the water, make sure there’s no water left, and then:

– Go mix your eggs (usually while the matzah is soaking), put some salt and pepper in there

– And then, you pour the egg on top of the drained matzoh,

– Mix it within the drained matzoh, prep your stove,

– YOU CAN scramble it or have it pancake style, (my grandpa likes it pancake style, but I’m not about that life, I like it scrambled.

– You must wait for the matzah brie to fully cook.

– I hate it when the brie is like eggy and not cooked, it’s disgusting, so wait until it is fully cooked.

– When it’s done, serve it however, but make sure you have some good jam.  I’m a big blueberry jam person, but you do you.

 

This is a good way for this person, D.F., to get in touch with her own culture.  Her being Jewish has always been a huge part of her identity, and she externalizes that identity whenever she can.  If that means preparing this dish, along with others she likes, as often as she can, then that is how she portrays herself to the world.

I found this very interesting, because; while my family on my father’s side is jewish, I had never heard of this recipe before this person’s interview.  The ingredients in the dish remind me of my own family, and the times I spent with them during the holidays, but that combination of ‘foods’ was totally foreign to me.  So, n0w that I’ve heard about it, I feel almost as if I’m more encouraged to explore my own identity, and ask the people I’m close with how they portray themselves to others, including me.

 

High School Post-Rehearsal Chant

Nationality: Israeli American
Age: 23
Occupation: Writer's PA
Residence: Studio City
Performance Date: 04/19/19
Primary Language: English
Language: Hebrew

Ritual:

“At the end of every rehearsal, no matter how tense it ended, no matter how bad of a note it ended on, we said this chant. It was something like, “I have one last thing to say, goo cacti. Wu-tang, wu-tang, wu-tang crew ain’t nunckuck, who? With tight groups and apple…proceed.” So how this came to be was that apparently our director started it when he was at that high school and people over the years just added on different phrases to it. Cacti was the name of my director’s friend group in high school I think.

Context:
This was the post-rehearsal ritual of a high school theater group in Los Angeles.

Informant Background:

The informant is 23, from Los Angeles.

My Analysis:

High school in general is a place that likes to memorialize people. While sports teams can hang banners in gyms to immortalize sports achievements, high school theater groups must come up with alternate methods to preserve their “greats”. For example, the kids in my high school theater program would save costumes of respected peers as a way to preserve their memories. This chant seems like another way of doing that as well. The actual chant is completely indecipherable of any sort of meaning to me, and the informant I interviewed couldn’t explain any of the segments besides the first one, “cacti”. Therefore, it seems that each group of kids that adds to it gets to add their own private meaning to the chant through their own nonsense word. This is an example of cultural intimacy that would seem weird to outsiders, which only makes members of the group more proud of their tradition.