Tag Archives: tradition

Banging Pots and Pans on New Years 

Nationality: Mexican-Filipino American
Age: 22
Occupation: Engineer
Residence: Irvine, CA
Language: English

Text

“Every New Year’s Eve, right when the clock strikes midnight, my family rushes outside and we start banging on pots and pans like our lives depend on it. It’s loud, chaotic, and silly if you are a neighbor watching next door.

We don’t do this tradition just to make noise for fun, we are scaring away bad spirits. My Lola would say, ‘Make it so loud the malas (bad luck) can’t follow us into the New Year.” i feel like this tradition is not about silence and reflection. It’s more about being loud, communal, and kind of joyful. It shakes things up and clears space for something better.

Every year, no matter where I am, I find something to bang. When I’m not at home, I’ll use a cup and spoon if need be. Because for me, the noise is more than just a tradition. It is a way of saying that we made it to a new year and that we should chase bad spirits away and welcome what is to come next.”

Context 

The informant reflects on a recurring family ritual: banging pots and pans at midnight on New Year’s Eve to ward off bad luck. She traces the tradition to her lola (grandmother) and describes how this action has remained central to her family’s New Year’s celebration.

The informant highlighted how rituals passed down through generations become markers of cultural identity even when performed in different settings from where her grandmother originally would do this to where her family does it now.

My interpretation 

From a folklore perspective, banging pots and pans on New Year’s Eve functions as a protective folk belief ritual that’s aligned with what James Frazer termed magic superstitions. In this case it would be conversion magic where action is required to prevent misfortune. The practice is not institutionally religious but it operates within a system of vernacular spirituality and community belief that’s passed down through generations in domestic spaces.

The ritual also fits within a life cycle of belief systems surrounding transitions and thresholds like what Victor Turner would call a liminal moment. The striking of the pots is part of a ritual of noise that marks and manages a cosmic shift. Symbolically, the sound disorients evil, clears spiritual residue from the old year, and prepares the household for prosperity.

This ritual functions as both cultural preservation and performance of identity. It’s an informal act of heritage that resists assimilation by rooting the celebrant in a shared memory and practice.

Simbang Gabi

Age: 89
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Corona, CA
Language: English, Tagalog

Text

“I was born in the Philippines and grew up there. One ritual that stood out to me was Simbang Gabi. Every December 16th, we would begin nine days of dawn Masses leading up to Christmas. We woke up before the sun, wrapped ourselves in warm clothes, and walked to church with the stars still out. We called this Simbang Gabi, which means ‘night mass’ even though it happened just before sunrise. This originally was for farmers so they could worship before going into the fields. Even though this is a novena, it always felt like a festival too. After mass we would have puto bumbong, bibingka, and salabat.

When I moved to the United States back in the day, I missed Simbang Gabi. Eventually,I found a Filipino church group and started celebrating it again. Sometimes it’s at night instead of dawn since people work during the day. It’s not exactly the same, but the spirit is there.

Simbang Gabi is not just about going to church. It’s about preparing your heart for Jesus Christ. It’s about hope and light in the darkness. And every year, we do it again, not because we have to but because it reminds us who we are.”

Context

This narrative was shared by an 89-year-old Filipino woman currently living in Southern California. She was born and raised in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States around the 1960s. This story was told as a reflective oral account of the Simbang Gabi ritual, a Filipino Catholic tradition she participated in throughout her life, both in the Philippines and in the diaspora. 

This informant is a respected elder in her community and has acted as a cultural bearer for her children and grandchildren. She continues to practice elements of the ritual at home and at church with her church group.

My Interpretation

From a folklore perspective, Simbang Gabi functions as both a life-cycle and calendar ritual, which is tied to the Advent season and culminates on Christmas Eve. it is a clear example of intangible cultural heritage that is passed through oral tradition, communal memory, and ritual performance. The informant’s account also demonstrates how folklore adapts across geographies while retaining its symbolic core and responding to the needs of diasporic communities.

The ritual serves multiple functions since it is devotional, communal, performative, and sensory. It creates a liminal space between night and day, preparing the faithful spiritually while reaffirming cultural bonds. The informant’s memory of the Mass as both a sacred and celebratory event illustrates the blurring of ritual and festival, which is a common feature in folk tradition. This narrative also highlights how older members of a cultural group serve as active bearers of tradition, keeping practices alive even in new cultural contexts. 

Lechon

Age: 51
Occupation: English
Residence: Corona, CA

Text

“When I think about big Filipino parties like weddings, baptisms, birthdays, Christmas, and even some funerals, the first thing that comes to mind is the lechon.

Lechon is a whole roasted pig, skin golden and crispy, head and all. It’s not just food; it’s also a spectacle. When the lechon arrives, someone always yells, “andiyan na ang lechon!” (the lechon is here), like someone famous just arrived. People gather around it, phones out, kids ready to grab, and family members grabbing their plates to have a piece.

Here in California, we usually order it from a caterer. It arrives crispy and ready to eat. The most important part of the lechon is the skin. It’s crispy, salty, and slightly sweet.

Lechon isn’t just something we are eating. It is a real celebration that marks abundance, pride, and hospitality. It shows that you spared no effort to feed your guests, too. Sometimes it can become a competition of who had the best lechon.

Even when there are other yummy dishes like pancit or lumpia, the lechon is always the centerpiece. It almost feels like the lechon is the guest of honor.

When I see lechon on the table, I don’t see just food. I see a tradition. I see a family showing love the Filipino way, which is full of laughter and full bellies.”

Context

The informant of this narrative was born in the U.S. to immigrant parents from the Philippines and grew up attending traditional Filipino gatherings in both domestic and community settings. Her story centers on lechon, which is a whole roasted pig that serves as the focal point of large celebratory events. The presence of lechon transforms an ordinary gathering into a culturally significant event, and its performance carries a deep symbolic and social meaning.

My Interpretation

From a folklore perspective, lechon functions as a material symbol of abundance, kinship, and collective identity. While it is technically a food item, it is best understood as a ritual object within the context of Filipino celebrations. Its preparation and presentation serve as a ritualized performance, where cultural meaning is enacted, remembered, and passed down.

The centrality of lechon to the events positions it as a symbolic quest of honor. The pig, therefore, is not just food but a performative symbol that embodies both economic investment and cultural pride. Its role aligns with the folkloristic principle that everyday practice scan function as nonverbal, expressive culture, encoding shared beliefs and values.

Lechon also serves as a visual and sensory expression of Filipino-American identity in diaspora. Even when the preparation changes from backyard firepits in the Philippines to pre-ordered catering in California, the core symbolic structure remains there. This demonstrates the multiplicity and variation that define folklore: traditions persist not because they are static but because they adapt meaningfully to new environments while preserving key elements. 

In this sense, lechon is more than just a cuisine. It is a ritual marker of festivity, community, and cultural continuity.

Happy Birthday sung in three languages

Nationality: Taiwanese-American
Age: 20
Occupation: Animation student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA / Queens, NY
Language: English

Text:

JC: “Okay, so um… for context, well you know this but my parents were originally from Taiwan, but my dad grew up in Costa Rica, so he’s picked up an understanding of Spanish. And in my family, we had this big group of like… in a lot of holiday celebrations, so like New Years or in the summer, we all tend to gather around and like, celebrate a specific holiday. And as a tradition we sing happy birthday first in English, ’cause everyone understands it, and then in Chinese to kind of like.. just for all the grandparents to understand, for them to join in, and for.. all of the like, Taiwanese people around. And then for the Costa Rican side, we end up singing it in Spanish.”

Context:

Informant JC is part of a multi-cultural and multi-lingual family. He added, “I always thought that was very interesting, like my family dynamic. I’m primarily Taiwanese-American, but we still ended up incorporating like a lot of Costa Rican cultural bits. There’s like, having Costa Rican food on the side, or being more open to Costa Rican culture. I also feel like because we’ve all like, grown up in America, like my parents moved when they were very young, and my relatives came in more progressively, and they’ve had to assimilate to American culture. A lot of what we end up doing feels very American.”

Analysis:

Happy Birthday songs are ritualized celebrations of the human life cycle, commemorating the completion of an approximate solar year since a person’s birth. They provide an opportunity for one’s community to get together and reaffirm their bonds with a person.

JC’s multilingual birthday ritual is especially significant in light of broader political changes. From 1949 to 2007, Costa Rica had diplomatic relations with Taiwan. After nearly 60 years, Costa Rica decided to break off this relationship in favor of establishing ties with China. Despite these shifting political alliances, JC’s family birthday ritual demonstrates that community bonds extend beyond the borders and interests of the nation-state.

No Hitter Jinx

Nationality: American

Occupation: Student

Residence: San Diego, CA

Text:

When a pitcher is throwing a no hitter or a perfect game, nobody in the dugout is allowed to talk to the pitcher and nobody at all (including teammates, fans, broadcasters, and anyone else watching) is allowed to say the words “no-hitter” or “perfect game”. If you talk to the pitcher or if you say no-hitter you will jinx the pitcher and they will give up a hit.

Context:

Both of these rules are common practice across baseball, and my friend has experienced both of them first hand. In high school, one of his teammates had a perfect game going through 6 innings; when he was not on the mound the pitcher sat by himself at the far end of the dugout and nobody, including the coaches would talk to him. Normally coaches would ask how a pitcher is feeling after every inning and give them advice, but the coach stayed far away. The pitcher successfully finished the perfect game. As a fan, my friend was in attendance when the Mets pitched a no-hitter in 2022. Everybody knew that the Mets had a no-hitter going, and the crowd became more and more excited as they got closer to closing out the game, but nobody ever said the words “no-hitter”. People would count down the number of outs left, or ask each other questions like “do you think they’ll pull it off” but everyone carefully avoided the words “no-hitter”.

Analysis:

Both of these rules are in line with Frazers principles of sympathetic magic. The refusal to talk to a pitcher can be seen as wanting to avoid contact with the pitcher along the lines of the Law of Contact. If a pitcher has a perfect game going and you come into contact with him, then your imperfections could influence the pitcher and ruin his perfect game. The refusal to say the words “no-hitter” or “perfect game” follows a similar idea, but here you are not interacting with the pitcher but rather with the perfect game itself. By saying “perfect game”, a person is indirectly contacting the perfect game (if the perfect game is to be thought of as an object), and by contacting the perfect game the person risks magically ruining the game. Beyond the magical beliefs of a perfect game, there is major societal pressure involved with these rules. If you break one of these rules and a pitcher gives up a hit, people will blame you for it. To avoid the risk of being blamed, people follow these rules whether they believe in magic or not.