Tag Archives: Rituals

First-foot

Nationality: Scottish
Age: 51
Occupation: Occupational Therapist
Residence: Placentia, CA
Performance Date: 4/14/19
Primary Language: English

Context:

I conducted this interview over the phone, the subject was born and raised in Scotland before moving to England, Canada, the United States, then to Northern Ireland, and, finally, back to the United States. I knew she continued to practice certain traditions which were heavily present in her childhood and wanted to ask her more about them.

 

Piece:

“I’ve learned this from my childhood, from Grandma and Grandpa. It’s this big tradition in Scotland, when you grow there it’s what you know. It is a New Year’s tradition, at midnight, we call it “when the bells ring” on Hogmanay, um you, either go first footing if you’re a young person, or you get a first foot, which means it’s the first person to step inside your house for the new year and they have to have dark hair. Usually they have a gift, nothing big, maybe a drink or something, to bring luck to the house, and they cannot, under any circumstance, have light or blonde hair.”

Interviewer: “Why do you carry this tradition?”

Subject: “Because I’ve been taught to believe that if you don’t do this, or have someone who’s blonde come in, then your year will have bad luck. This is purely Scottish.”

 

Analysis:

First-footing is a common practice in Scotland and Northern England. Some areas have more elaborate forms of this practice, such as in Worcestershire where you must stop a caroler and bring them inside. Sometimes the ritual must also be accompanied by some entertainment, such as with the caroler, or with a dance. It is considered unlucky to have a female, or a male with female-hair be the first-foot.

A resident of the home is allowed to be the first-foot, so long as they were not inside the home at the stroke of midnight. The gifts the first-food brings also vary, such as coin, bread, salt, alcoholic beverages, etc.

 

Senior Send Off in High School Theater Community: Ritual

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 04/16/19
Primary Language: English

Folk Tradition:

“This was a senior tradition in theater. After our last performance of our last show, the director would invite all the seniors back into the theater after everyone had left and we would look at the ghost light and he said, ‘Right now is just a time for you to be with all the characters you’ve played here, so this is a time to say goodbye to them. So, we would go on stage and remember through action. We would go through different entrances or funny moments in shows and there was no end time. We would stay until we said goodbye.”

Context:

This would take place after the seniors’ last performance with their high school theater program in their Los Angeles public school.

Background:

The informant is 21, from Calabasas, and an actor.

My Analysis:

This is a folk piece with a lot of levels. First and foremost, the concept of the ‘ghost light’ is a folk belief that a light must always be left on in every theater for the ghosts that haunt the space. Though not every theater has someone who died in it, most theater spaces are regarded as sacred by the community and the residence for supernatural beings/occurrences.  The idea of everyone gathering around to stare into the ghost light is a way of symbolically channeling the spirits. It is interesting that the theater teacher prompted the students to say goodbye to the characters they played because it aligns these fictional characters with the actual spirits regarded by theater communities everywhere (symbolized in the ghost light). It could also be interpreted as summoning previous versions of oneself (the self that did perform these characters). High school is a very transformative time for many people, so summoning and saying goodbye to iterations of yourself over those years could be a very cathartic task for students before they leave for college.

High School Theater Pre-Show Ritual

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 03/15/19
Primary Language: English

Folk Ritual:

“Before a show we would go outside of the theater – literally outside of the building. This was in high school. We would stand in a circle and do pass the squeeze. Stand in a circle and squeeze hands one at a time. Then, we would all run in the middle and say “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe as a chant, but it changed based on the show we were in. We would insert the show name in there somewhere. And then the boys and girls would split up, so I don’t really know what the boys did – I think it would get pretty rough. The girls would stand on a little raised curb and hold hands and sing a verse from “Bye Bye Birdie” really loud. Then we would all go back in the circle and you would say ‘got your back’ to people as you walked into the theater and tap them on the back.”

Context:

This was the pre-show ritual for a public high school’s theater program in Calabasas, CA. The informant said it was a “tradition there for as long as I ever knew, and this would have been between 2014 and 2016.”

Informant Background:

The informant is 21, from Calabasas, and an actor!

My Analysis:

The separation by gender in the high school theater ritual seems to be a trope. I believe this is related to the age of the performers and the ‘otherness’ placed upon the opposite sex by society in that age of physical development. The boys moshing is another trope I’ve seen in these contexts, perhaps the males feel a need to exert their stereotypical “manhood” by becoming violent before they perform a socialized as “femme” extra curricular activity, theater. The girls also perform their gender by standing on a higher platform, perhaps symbolizing being above violence, and singing while holding hands. This performance of peaceful sweetness paints the picture of stereotypical femininity.

Choosing to say “got your back” is a safe theatrical well wishing before a show as “good luck” is considered bad luck. “Break a Leg” or “Merde”, the French word for shit used to mean good luck, are violent and gross, making them potentially inappropriate for high school kids. Therefore, the invented “got your back” makes a sweet substitute. Finally, choosing to chant “The Raven”, while dark, also gives what they are about to do an air of sacredness due to its fame and fear it instills.

Snow Day Ritual

Nationality: American
Age: 26
Occupation: Student
Residence: St. Joseph, Michigan, United States
Performance Date: 2/13/19
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Description

“You would hear there was a snow coming, a big storm, and in order to secure the snow day, you would do the pre-snow day ritual. What you would do is wear your pajamas backwards, then flush three ice cubes down the toilet. While the ice cubes were being flushed you would chant ‘I love snow days.’ The ice needed to be gone, your pants needed to be backwards, and then you had to do it until the ice cubes were gone. If it worked, you were a genius, and if it didn’t work, you were pretty stupid.”

Context

The informant reported that in Michigan, where they are from, snow days are incredibly important to school culture. This ritual would be used when the informant was in school, usually in the winter, to attempt to secure a snow day, which involved shutting down school for a day due to inclimate weather.

Analysis

A lot of students have been heard of doing this — I had similar snow day rituals that the students believed, often well into high school. I find this sort of thing very cool because where does it come from? At what point, after the invention of the modern school day began, did something like this start, and how did it become customary for students? My own personal idea is that it comes from other rituals to ward off evil, but is a children’s bastardization of that idea, creating their own.

 

Rocks on Gravestones

Nationality: Israeli
Age: 24
Occupation: Student
Residence: California
Performance Date: 4/21/19
Primary Language: Hebrew
Language: English

Context:

The subject is from Israel, and is a freshman at USC. Throughout my time of knowing him he has shared many jokes and proverbs that are specific to his home country. For this reason, I decided to interview him for the database.

 

Piece:

Subject: Something else, which I’m not sure is tied just to Jews or not, is we put rocks on gravestones. So instead of flowers, or chocolates, I don’t know, we put rocks there, like a pebble or a bigger one.

Interviewer: That’s really interesting, do you know why?

Subject: I think it’s just a symbol of strength and firmness, and that’s what we want our relationship with the person to be remembered as.

 

Analysis:

Upon further research, I’ve found that this is quite a common practice, although different cultures have different explanations as to why they carry it out. For thousands of years, people would place rocks on tombs in order to stop scavengers, or keep evil spirits out of the world. In addition, it would also be to stop the deceased from rising up.

In Jewish cultures, placing a stone or a pebble is customary, as a form of respect for the deceased, and to let them know that you have visited.