X-hour

Title: X-hour

General Information about Item:

  • Customary folklore: rituals, traditions
  • Language: English
  • Country where Item is from: USA

Informant Data:

  • Trevor Davis is an ’18 that joined X.ado his freshman year and sang in his high school choir for three years. He is 21 years old. He was born in Wheaton, Illinois. He grew up and still lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. He is majoring in computer science, and minoring in math and anthropology.

Contextual Data:

  • Social Context

All members of X.ado participate in this ritual. It occurs once a week. This ritual began when the group was created 25 years ago. The informant first experienced it during his first week as a member of X.ado.

  • Cultural Context

X-hour is a joke about the Dartmouth class schedule. Every class has extra optional class periods that professors use as much or as little as they wish. These periods are often called X hours. This ritual of meeting once a week just to share beliefs, reconnect and talk also reflects the inclusive and close group culture X.ado has.

Item: Once a week, X.ado meets for an hour to have an event called “X-hour”. At this event, members sometimes participate in prayers together, have a bible study, support other members by sharing affirmations about each other, make spontaneous music together and more. The hour is a chance for group members to relax, have a good time and reconnect.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

https://youtu.be/Ok09mJ4PeNQ

Transcript of Associated File:

X-hour is something we do once a week, for an hour. It starts with an X, it’s kind of a joke about the class schedule. It’s something we’ve been doing for the full 25 years of our existence where we just meet together as a group and have a bible study. Like last week we did affirmations, where we go around the group and everybody says something like really affirmative about the person that they like or something meaningful about that person. It helps us grow together as a group. Sometimes during X-hour one of the things that we’ll do is worship. We’ll have someone bring it like a guitar or something and just do some music to celebrate our faith and people try to like harmonize and stuff, but if you are not prepared for that, where you don’t have sheet music like for acapella then you sound like really really bad. I remember sometimes just like these atrocious noises coming out of x-hour, but people have a good time and it just makes it really entertaining.

Informant’s Comments:

  • See transcript

Collector’s Comments:

This is a pretty unique tradition that I haven’t seen with any other groups. It makes sense given X.ado’s religious roots and serves to strengthen the group as well as their religious connection.

Collector’s Name: Marcus Reid

Compiled/Analyzed by: Afnan Enayet/Sruthi Pasupuleti

Tags/Keywords:

  • acapella
  • team
  • ritual
  • bonding

 

 

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