Tag Archives: Rituals

Chinese Funeral Traditions

Nationality: American
Age: 25
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 13th, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin

Informant Background: The informant was born in rural parts of China called Hainan. She lived there with her grandparents where she attended elementary school. She moved to the United States when she was thirteen. She speaks both Chinese and English. She lives in Los Angeles with her mother but travels back to visit her relatives in Beijing and Hainan every year. She and her mother still practice a lot of Chinese traditions and celebrate Chinese holidays through special meals.

 

Usually the family and relatives would gather for the funeral. The coffin would be in a room where it’s decorated with white flowers. The guest would give the host money in a white envelope to pay for the funeral. Usually Chinese people try not to use white envelope in normal life because white is the color of death…So they use white in this occasion…same as flower, Chinese people tend to give each other colorful flowers. The people attending the funeral would wear black or white.

One of the things I remember the most is that there are always these paper objects for burning. The paper will be folded and made into something like a house, a car, clothes, phone, etc. These things are made of paper so that they can be burned. It is believed that the stuff you burned will appear in heaven for your deceased. There are also gold and silver paper which represents wealth. You burn those as well. Most of the time all the family member would stack of the objects in a big pile and set off a large fire then they all stand around watching it burn….And then, later they would do the gold and silver paper individually. Everyone usually participate.  

Also part of a funeral ritual in Chinese culture is that you are supposed to leave the body for seven days before you bury the body so that the soul can be released. If the body is buried before the seventh day then the soul is trapped inside the body. This is also how many of these bodies become ghosts because their soul can’t leave the earth.

The informant said that this is a traditional ritual in Chinese funeral. She learned about this knowledge through her observation after participating in funeral rituals where people emphasize these practices. She said many Chinese funerals take place for seven days, in those different days many of the same repeated and some different rituals occur to lead into the last/seventh day where the body is then buried.

 

These traditions show the importance of funeral as a life event for both the individual and the family, more for the family since the individual is no longer present at the event. There also many rituals associated with the event that has to be executed correctly. Funeral as an event also shows family ties and connection of the deceased to the community. Those rituals are specific and take times and money.

This shows how the color white is used as morbid rather than in Western culture where it is use in wedding to represent the innocence and the purity of the bride. The white flowers, white envelop, and white clothing shows how white as a color have a negative connotation. This clarified a question I’ve always ponder about why Chinese people give out red envelop at Chinese New Year. Similar to other culture’s where the objects and rituals during funerals are exclusive to the event; in this case the color white is reserved for funeral rituals only.

The burning of paper objects is very interesting to me. It is the idea of homeopathic magic where “like” creates “like.” In this particular case the magic is then the transition to transfer those objects from the physical realm to the spiritual realm. I think that this practice also show fear of the unknown relating to the idea of death and the afterlife where the burning of family objects is a way to ensure some certainty in the afterlife. The burning of those paper objects as a ritual reflects how the objects disappear into the air like how the spirit did.

The burial after seven day as a belief is similar to other culture’s origin of ghost where the dead body did not receive proper funeral ritual. In this case being buried too soon would trap the soul in the deceased body. The deceased body and the soul then become a haunting ghost.

The ritual of waiting for seven days resonate the concept of number seven as a reoccurring theme in many Eastern and Western Culture: seven planets, seven days, seventh heaven, etc. It shows how the idea the seven planets as a measure of time and day in the calendar effect many rituals and life events in many culture.

 

Christmas in Germany

Nationality: German
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/18/13
Primary Language: English
Language: German

A German tradition is: on Christmas, all children have to go to bed for approximately like two hours—uh, they have to take a nap from about 4 to 6 pm, and then they all get dressed up and stand outside of the door to the living room where, um…yeah, all the kids are standing outside… and only when the parents sing a specific song are the kids allowed to go inside, and um… every kid has to play a musical instrument or sing or dance or something, and only when everyone is done are you allowed to go in and open your presents. 

 

This German tradition differs greatly from the American tradition, which seems now to be based solely on the giving and reception of gifts. The whole day, in my opinion, has been reduced to economics: spending money, stimulating the economy, partaking in the American consumerism that dominates the culture. Lost are the religious rituals that accompany the celebration of Christmas (for the most part). Rather, Christmas has achieved a more secular significance.

 

Christmas in my family, like in many American families, has been reduced to gift giving and receiving. Weeks in advance my siblings publish lists of material things that they want and where these items can be acquired with the most ease. As my family is not terribly religious, and as many others aren’t either, what else would Christmas signify? How do you acknowledge and celebrate a day whose significance is insignificant to you? Thus, the progression from religion to retail makes sense.

 

I find it interesting and quite cool that Germans incorporate cultural songs and dances into their celebration of Christmas. Sophia admits that most Germans are not very religious, so the replacement of the standard Christian hymns and prayers and affirmations by pieces of German culture feels more natural for them and adds a unique twist to the celebration.

 

Zozobra

Nationality: American
Age: 17
Occupation: High School Student
Residence: Albuquerque, NM
Performance Date: 3/10/2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

“Build a giant man essentially, out of flammable material and write fears or things you want to expunge from your life for the new year.  It’s usually done around harvest time.  You write down the fears on pieces of paper and put them in the statue and burn it.  It’s supposed to get rid of your fears and the bad spirits.”

The informant believes that the ritual has Spanish, Mexican and Native American roots.  She learned it when she first moved to New Mexico by seeing it done at a Native American pueblo.  The informant says that her school also does it every year with the 7th graders as part of a harvest fest, and there is a giant one in Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico.  The informant compared the burning of the zozobra (the statue) to the making of resolutions for the New Year.  The practice allows people to start new each year and banish any of their own personal demons in a time of abundance with the harvest.

 

 

Ring the Chapel Bell

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: College Student
Residence: Athens, GA
Performance Date: 3/16/2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish, French, Hebrew

“Uhh…I guess we all know the..to…you ring the chapel bell after…Like after, um, a team wins or just like after something good happens to you like if you get an “A” on a test or something. Ummm.  Like after football games, if we win, there’s like an hour wait to go ring the bell. Ummm.” (I asked if she had rung the bell.) “Yes.  Well it’s a tradition for my like sorority family to go do it on big little reveal night, and we also do it on bid night.  And ummm. I have never done it after a football game just cause it’s too long.”

The informant attends the University of Georgia, and she loves football like most of her school, which is probably why the line is so long at the bell after a team win.  The bell allows everyone to take part in the joy of winning the football game.  The informant told me that the university talked about the ritual on the tours for prospective students, but it is also just something that everyone knows.  Ringing the chapel bell and knowing what that means is an initiation into the university community, and as she said, it has been adopted by her sorority as an initiation ritual for new members.  In addition to celebrating what good thing has happened to you, no matter how small, ringing the bell becomes common knowledge that helps the new members of a sorority or freshman at the university make the shift from being outsiders to insiders.

Saying Thanks

Nationality: American
Age: 58
Occupation: Hotel Owner/Manager
Residence: Nashville, TN
Performance Date: 3/20/2013
Primary Language: English

Every Thanksgiving, the informant’s family goes around the table while each person says what they are thankful for before they eat the meal.  The informant records all of the thank yous on tape, and he says that many people who have shared Thanksgiving with the family have brought the tradition home with them and adopted it as their own.

The informant said he liked to do it, first of all, because it made all the kids nervous, but also because it got everyone involved.  Each person would have their own version of a thank you from his sister in-law who would read a pre-written 4 page one to the kids who year after year would repeat “Thank you for the food.”

He got the tradition from his in-laws and started recording them, but then the traditional meal moved to his house so he could control it a bit more.  The thank you is also a bit of an initiation for new members of the family because everyone has to say something.

I asked if he ever plans to watch them, and the informant replied, “Oh yeah, some point I will.”

The tradition of saying thank you brings the family together, and it gets everyone to really think about their lives in the past year.  It allows people to say the things that are normally too cheesy to say in public.  For the children, the Thanksgiving where they say they are thankful for more than the food also represents a rite of passage where they are now adult enough to say something more meaningful to them.