Ethnography Of Holidays

Ethnography of Holidays and Traditions In my family we have a tendency to keep the holiday gatherings small but filled with enough life and importance that we can talk about them for years to come. We have three main holidays that we enjoy celebrating together as a family and then we have one tradition that we open up to all of our family and friends from my hometown. These holidays include New Years Eve, Thanksgiving, and Christmas and the favorite annual pig roast. All these gatherings are a great way for my family to finally catch up with one another and just let loose. For New Years Eve my parents and I go next door to my grandmother’s house because she is the only one with cable tv and we wait for the clock to strike midnight so we can

At the end of the night before we all go to bed, we make sure to set out some milk and cookies for Santa to be sure he has something to hold him over before he gets back home to the North Pole. Even though I personally do not believe in Santa anymore, it is still a tradition we hold for my younger cousins, nephews, and niece who may be at the house on Christmas Eve and still believe in Santa. Traditionally, Santa is known to most children as the man who makes the trip all around the world to leave presents for each boy and girl making sure the only discrimination and bias is based off whether or not the child was good. On Christmas Eve, Santa slides down the chimney so he can leave the children their toys rewarding their good behavior. According to “A child’s Christmas in America”, the chimney and fireplace is supposed to represent the birth canal. “Meerloo and de Groot note parallels in the pre-Christian fertility gods replaced by Saint Nicholas”, Saint Nicholas being Santa. (Belk, 1987, page

Every summer we slaughter one of our own pigs the first Saturday of every August. Early that morning before the sun even has a chance to rise, my father comes into my room and wakes me up so we can begin preparing for the annual pig roast. Once I am up and out of bed I meet my father across the road where he has already whistled to call the pigs up to the fence and fed them so they all stay put and my father can have access to the one he needs to shoot. After he shoots it, I help him get it over to the slaughtering table where we begin to skin and gut it. After we finish, we lift it over to the fourwheeler and I drive it across the road and to the roaster. From there we lift from the fourwheeler to the roaster and my father starts the fire with branches from the apple trees and locust trees. The pig cooks from at least 5:30-6:00 a.m. to when people start arriving which is anywhere from 12:00-1:00 p.m. and it still continues to cook all day letting it become more and more tender as the day goes on. My mother begins to wake up around 6:30 a.m. to start preparing multiple dishes such as her famous baked beans, chicken wing dip, and many other dishes. The people who end up coming are anyone from our family and relatives to our friends to just the town of Howard and has even friends of other friends and neighboring towns. The only thing we ask of people who come and people who ask to invite others is to bring a