Reflecting

My questions that I have posed for my project is about Christmas within my families.  The first questions that I would like to answer would be what are the differences between the two sets of families (my mother and father)?  Second, how have they changed from generation to generation?  Third, what has spurred the changes?  Fourth, how have I changed the traditions to fit my needs/wants?
I have already conducted interviews and I used my grandmother on my father's side of the family and my grandmother on my mother's side of the family (both grandfathers are unfortunately deceased), as well as my mother and father, and used memories of my last Christmas (the first Christmas I had together with my wife).
I found that I did ask the right questions, the problem that I did run into was I did get the answer "I don't know that is always how we did it" from my grandmothers, but not too many times to be a hindrance.  Other than that I did get the amount of information that is needed to explain quite a bit of traditions that we do.
I am finding that while trying to explain why changes occured, due to regional changes, to look at the region and take the traditions and information and apply it as an explanation for some changes, some do not match though.
My project hasn't changed much at all, I did have to change a little bit, I decided to omit a lot of information pertaining to the Christmas Tree because it was a case of information overload.
Right now I need to write up my rough draft and go back to my family and show it to them to make sure that I have everything right and then write my final draft.  So should be done next week.

Group Traditions - Warhammer 40K

The tradition that I did was Warhammer 40K.  I really did not think about this to be a tradition at first, but after doing this there are most definitely elements of it being a tradition.

The tradition is every Thursday night at Game On I play Warhammer 40K with a group of friends.  It never fails, every Thursday night we meet and play our game until the cows come home, usually ending from midnight to 3 a.m.  Now, to me I really didn't think of it as a tradition, more of a friends getting together and playing a game, nothing more.  We started about 2 years ago and have been going ever since, obviously stopping during the holidays but starting back up afterwards.

The group that plays with me are three good friends, myself and some other that come in every now and then.  Most of the time it is Luke, Alex, and myself that play every Thursday night.  Friendly games are what we usually play, but every now and then when the people show up we get some tournaments going.  Luke plays Tau, Alex plays Space Wolves, and I play Dark Eldar.  The following pictures are of the Tau army and Space Wolves respectively, unfortunately I do not have any pictures of my own army.

The origin of this tradition is mutually agreed on, we found each other at the same place at different times, Luke and Alex found it first and I came in after I went there while waiting for a movie to start, found that they were playing and we all agreed that Thursday nights would be the best because that was when we could all meet together.

This tradition is practiced mainly for human interaction, as well as playing a game that we love to play.  I say human interaction because it allows us to interact with each other outside of a school, or work setting and because it is the only place in the area with large enough tables and terrain adding another dimension to the game.

This tradition definitely gives us a group identity, we are a bunch of guys that play Warhammer 40K and have become known as "The Warhammer Guys," but it also adds to the identity because a lot of vocabulary we use is unique to the game, and quite a few of jokes that are thrown out will be understood only if you play the game.  Such as the opening picture!  But more than that it makes it feel as if we are our own group within the society around us.
Some instances of the different kind of humor that wouldn't be understood by people that don't play the game.

Christmas Time is Here

So, I was thinking about doing my final on Christmas traditions within my family and how they have changed through the ages, as well as how they have changed through the years and generations, also I am hoping to pin point, or at least try to find what had influenced the changes.  My mother's side of the family comes from Sicily (so influenced by the Italian traditions) and my father's side of the family hails from Hamburg, Germany (so is influenced by the German traditions).  I do have some snags so far, when I talked to my grandmothers (my grandfathers on both sides are deceased) about what they remember of Christmas, as well as what they do now, and then turned around and talked to my father and mother and there were discrepancies between what they remember as a kid and what my grandmothers told me about how they celebrate Christmas.  I was going to do this comparison and changes all the way down through the line to me and my wife (last year being our first Christmas together).  The really cool thing about doing this so far is that my grandmother on my father's side of the family gave me 4 boxes of Christmas decorations (both for the tree as well as the house in general), the bad news is that I went to unwrap some and wound up breaking a couple of them because they were so old and fragile, so I will try to incorporate as many pictures into my final as I can, but some of them may be of a lot of tissue paper with a little trinket inside for fear of breaking the items.

AZ Best Fest

How is it that we define a ritual?  When we think of the word ritual, what is it that most often pops into the mind?  Within our book there is a definition provided: "stylized, highly contextualized, deeply symbolic activities that enable groups to acknowledge, exemplify and/or act out certain traditional ideas, values and beliefs" (Page 95, Living Folklore)  When we think of a ritual most of the time it is thought to be a repeated event at a certain time and place, never changing, but this is not always the case.  Allow an example, the Quinceanera happens only once during a persons lifetime, their sixteenth birthday, and is usually more important to a female rather than the male.  With this in mind thinking about what the AZ Best Fest represents we can see how it is a ritual, the festival being one of celebration for Arizona's 100th birthday of Statehood.  There are some ways in which the festival does not fall into ritual as well.  Although the festival itself is what falls into ritual, some of the events were not.  Take for example the booth that contained the state animals.  This was all factual, now, the concept of state animal, tree, bird, etc., does fall under ritual, giving an animal to represent the population.  Below are pictures of the Cactus Wren (state bird), the Palo Verde tree (state tree), and the Ringtail (state animal) respectively.

The area that I spent the most amount of time at was the military district, which was extremely interesting.  The traditional ideas that were expressed was one of the "wild west" that needed taming, or at least that needed to be watched over.  What was interesting was the beginning of the district discussed the beginning of the military background in the Arizona Territory, which consisted mainly of Calvary that protected settler towns, as well as raids from Native Americans and Mexicans.  Through time it discussed the evolution of these Cavalries into the Arizona 1st Infantry during World War I and World War II as well as how they participated in these wars.  After World War II the Arizona 1st Infantry was assimilated into the regular army and the division was dissolved.  Through the use of text, pictures, and antique vehicles, was this expressed.  Unfortunately the farthest back the vehicles went was World War II.  I would have loved to see some of the earlier artifacts.

The one thing that I was impressed with the Best Fest was the fact that it expressed many identities as well as a single identity.  The single identity it expressed was the people of Arizona, the many identities that it expressed was the many people that make up Arizona, by this meaning Native Americans, Hispanics, and the settlers.  The settlers that came to this area were represented through the Military District, the Hispanics expressed through the Hispanic District, and the Native Americans expressed through the Native American Quarter.  Unfortunately I just looked through the Hispanic District and the Native American Quarter, and spent most of my time in the Military District.


The first example of folklore that I thought was really cool was the World War II vehicles that were used by the Arizona 1st Infantry.  Although not the originals, they were remodeled WWII era vehicles, they were in great condition and very cool to see.  Secondly would have to be the information tent that ran lengthwise down the middle of the Military District.  This had a timeline of everything that had to do with Arizona in a military context.  What I learned from it was that Arizona had its own infantry unit in both World War I and World War II.  The third example of folklore would have to be the 1/100th scale model of the USS Arizona.  This model was actually built in the 1960's, and after time was found by a couple who bought it, when they purchased the model it was in a state of bad decay, and after many years they repaired it and brought it to its former glory.  Everything was perfect on the model, even the deck planking was painted perfectly.  The fourth example would be in front of Whiskey Row there was a folklore band that was singing songs about the early settlers, using country music as the base of their sound, it was actually really good (contrary of what I first thought it would be like), even if you didn't enjoy country music it would have been pleasant to hear!  Next was the Mariachi Band that was playing in the Hispanic District with their music accompanied by the dancers, it was a sight to behold!  The dresses the women were wearing was exquisite!  Very well put together and beautifully executed!

The frame that I thought was present through the Military District was that it glorified Arizona's military force.  I don't mean this in a bad way, more of it put it onto a pedestal, as to show our states past glory, as well as what needs to be lived up to.  Glorifying the past military is what sets it apart from the ordinary day to day life, through the use of stories told by past heroes.