Folklore Rules by Lynne S. McNeill

Author:Lynne S. McNeill
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-87421-906-7
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
Published: 2013-10-29T16:00:00+00:00

Things We Do

When it comes to things we do, we’re entering an incredibly broad area of folklore studies. Customs (like holiday traditions), gestures (like a thumbs-up or flipping someone off), parties (like costume parties or tea parties), rituals (like fraternity or sorority initiations, or bar mitzvahs), celebrations (like sixteenth or twenty-first birthdays), dances (like the two-step, the “Macarena,” the electric slide, the chicken dance), games (like kick the can, tag, capture the flag, and four-square12) . . . these are all things we do, and since many of them exist in forms that we learn informally, from our experiences in regular, everyday life, they fall under the purview of folklore. The quality these things all share in common, of course, is that they all require some kind of action—some type of body movement or physical participation in the tradition. Thus, the modes of transmission for this kind of folklore are largely observational. Unlike a legend, which can be e-mailed as easily as told in person, it’s not so easy to e-mail someone a Thanksgiving dinner celebration. Maybe you could e-mail someone an aspect of the custom, like a photo of the turkey or a copy of the toast someone gave, but not the whole experience.

This necessary level of engagement makes customs and events a super-fun form of folklore to study. Try asking different members of your family to describe a typical holiday celebration—you’ll be surprised how much meaning different people can place on different aspects of a holiday. In fact, it’s in traditional celebrations of holidays that we can see one of folklore’s biggest impacts on the lived experience: anyone who has married or moved in with someone who decorates a Christmas tree differently (blinking lights?! Who would do such a thing?) or who bakes the “wrong” kind of pie at Thanksgiving (pumpkin is, I’m sure we all agree, the only acceptable kind) or who never made green pancakes/beer/milk on St. Patrick’s Day (blasphemy!) has likely experienced the surprising impact that deeply ingrained customs can have on a relationship.

It can be hard to determine clear-cut boundaries for many examples of customary folklore. When does a meal begin—with the cooking or the eating?13 Does party prep or cleanup count as a traditional part of a traditional celebration? What aspects of the custom are dictated by tradition (foods? words? actions?), and which are nontraditional or up to individual choice (dress? contributions? arrival time?)? These questions can make the documentation and analysis of customary folklore quite tricky.

Imagine that a classmate is describing to you a weekly tradition he participates in, where a number of people gather each week to sing folk songs together. You may assume that you’re about to hear a lot of folk songs that your classmate sings, but when you initially ask him to tell you about it, he begins by explaining the group’s history, which predates his participation in it. Then, his descriptions of the actual events don’t really seem to focus only on the singing—there are desserts made

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