Tag Archives: Superstition

Doce Uvas

Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: North Carolina
Performance Date: 4/29/22
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Context: Subject is from New York City. 

Text:

“With my family, we have doce uvas, or twelve grapes, which is a tradition in Latin American households. So basically, households will set up a cup of twelve grapes for each member of the household, and once it’s officially New Years we celebrate and eat 12 grapes. Each grape represents a wish for next year, so it’s sort of like a good luck thing. But also, the reason it’s twelve grapes, is because you know twelve months in the year, which is important to keep in mind with this tradition”. 

Analysis:

This piece of folklore points out a commonality amongst many rituals, specifically them taking place at these liminal spaces in time. In this case, the grapes are eaten right in between one year and another, a perfect opportunity to get in touch with the supernatural in a sense. New Years in general is a ripe time for ritual and folkloric activities, with a new year representing endless amounts of opportunity and excitement, that obviously everything would be done to ensure it goes well. 

Snow Dance

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Performance Date: 4/29/22
Primary Language: English

Context: Has been vacationing in Utah for the past 10 to 11 years. He goes during the winter mainly to ski with family and friends. 

Text:

“And we go during the winter and during the summer. But especially during the winter, we do this thing called a powder dance or a snow dance. Just like right before we go to bed, me and my family do some crazy dance that doesn’t make any sense at all. But it’s not just the dance itself. It’s just the fact you are dancing, dancing for the “snow gods’ ‘. And I say it’s worked like 50 percent of the time, but it’s just a fun tradition I have with my family. And when it does work it’s epic, and we go ‘yooooo we did that’”. 

Analysis: 

This piece of folk dance here has three broader connections to the greater discussion around the discipline of folklore. Firstly, it is an example of folk dance, exemplifying the genre as variation is common with no two dances being the same. Additionally, it is another example of familial folklore, something that could be then spread down from generation to generation. Finally, it is also indicative of folklore generated as an attempt at explaining the unexplained. To pretend like we actually have any power of the all powerful forces such as weather is done through the means of folklore quite often. 

Bananas in the boat

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Performance Date: 4/29/22
Primary Language: English

Context: This person spent much of his childhood on a boat. Believes this tradition originated with sailboat trade from around the 1600s. 

Text:

“But, anyways, I’ve been fishing my whole life and growing up I was told that it’s bad luck to have bananas on the boat. If you had bananas on the boat, you’re going to run into bad weather, you’re not going to catch any fish, and just random bad things. I’ve continued that tradition onward when I go fishing. Can’t be cooked into anything else, or any other forms of bananas. Just no bananas. There are also people though, like this YouTuber I watch who’s a contrarian, who always goes fishing with a banana as a joke”.

Analysis: 

This particular piece of folklore highlights the extreme amount of folkloric content existing around the boating world. Consistently and without fail sailors and seamen in general have proven to be an extremely superstitious subsect of society. While maybe just an unexplainable trait for that group of people, could also be explained by the rich history with boating and seamen activities. Additionally, with so much of what happens out on the water being left up to the whims of mother nature, it makes sense that people would try and explain the unexplainable with superstitions. 

Pork over the Pali Highway

Background information: OLP is a 21-year-old student at Georgetown University. in They were raised in the Bay Area, but currently live in DC for school. Their parents met in Hawaii, and they were born in Honolulu. They visit frequently with their family, and their dad was raised there. OLP is white, Filipino, Mexican, and Japanese American.

OLP: You aren’t supposed to take pork over the Pali Highway in Hawaii. This comes from the Hawaiian myth that the goddess Pele had, like, a bad breakup with her boyfriend who was a pig god. So they divided the island between them, so taking pork from one side of the island to the other can anger Pele. This is pretty well-known in Hawaii but I’ve also heard from friends of my parents who said they’ve taken pork over the pali and their car broke down. The superstition says you won’t be able to finish your journey and you might be surrounding by spirits. A lot of locals take this very seriously and I think it’s an important way for people to show respect for Hawaiian traditions as well.

Me: So your family and family friends all observe this practice when you visit?

OLP: (laughs) Well…I’m vegetarian so yes. But yes, especially since so many people have had experiences where, like, something has happened if they tried. And it’s just good to respect things like this sometimes.

This is one of the only pieces of folklore that I collected in which someone had heard the same story directly from multiple people. I think this is very interesting, because it shows that these practices are alive and well, and that although Hawaii is often just seen as a tourist spot or getaway, there are traditions and cultures that need to be respected there. I think it’s really important that pieces of folklore like this – things that come from a time before a specific place or culture was colonized/occupied – continue to be shared and made known.

The Sunset and Death

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: California
Performance Date: April 26th, 2022
Primary Language: English

Text:

“I think about it a lot because I go against it a lot, and that belief is that you should not nap during–you should not nap or be asleep during when the sun sets. Like, I just heard–she just tells me the–the demons will come for you, basically. Like I don’t even know what it really is, it’s just, like, that you shouldn’t be asleep during that time, because, like, the symbolism of the sun setting could mean that, like, you yourself will die soon if you do things like that.”

Context:

Informant (WP) is a student aged 19 from Chino Hills, California. Her parents are from Thailand and Laos. She currently goes to USC. This piece was collected during an interview in the informant’s apartment. She heard this particular folk belief from her mom, who is from Thailand. The informant interprets this belief to mean you shouldn’t be asleep during this time because you might also go down with the sun.

Interpretation:

This belief may be an attempt to prevent children from napping during the sunset. If they nap then, they may stay up late into the night. To prevent this, the parents tell them they might die if they fall asleep while the sun is setting.