Customary/Ritual

American 50^th Birthday

Stephen Meade

Seattle, WA.

November 10th, 2020

Informant Data:

Stephen was born in Washington, D.C. in 1958 and had three siblings and two parents. He moved all around the country due to his dad’s military service. He moved to Seattle, WA in the later 80s and had four children. He has lived there ever since. He has worked in the military, product development, finance, and retail. He currently owns a chain of gift stores with his wife.

Contextual Data:

Cultural Context: In the United States, the 50^th birthday is significant because it is the decade birthday halfway to 100. Decade birthdays represent the start of a new stage in somebody’s life. For example, the 30s are for settling down, the 50s is when someone becomes middle-aged, and the 60s is when someone becomes a senior. These transitions are important in American culture and are celebrated accordingly, with large parties and gift-giving.

Social Context: The 50^th birthday is regarded as celebrating somebody making it halfway through life. Decade birthdays are often celebrated with lots of people, but the 50^th is very significant because it is considered the halfway mark. In the fast-paced modern world, it is hard to see many friends from the past, but friends and family from all over the country and world will come to celebrate this rare occasion. People will rent out venues or host large gatherings in their house to celebrate. The celebration includes eating the birthday person’s favorite foods and drinks, giving gifts, and dancing. Usually, this party is for adults, but some children in the family come.

Item:

When Stephen turned 50, his wife hosted a surprise birthday in a brewery in downtown Seattle. There were around 200 people in attendance, including friends and family from around the world. The catered food including his favorite pasta dish that his dad used to make him, his favorite beers from around the country, and the music played throughout the night was a CD playlist of his favorite songs that his wife made for him and gifted everyone at the end of the party. Guests brought meaningful gifts, such as wooden handmade sculptures, paintings, and items from their shared pasts that were filled with meaning to Stephen. After dinner, a giant chocolate cake came out and everybody in the room sang happy birthday.

Mitchell Meade

Hanover, NH

Dartmouth College

RUSS 13 Fall 2020

Customary/Ritual

Hawaiian 1^st Birthday

Eric Dreyer

Mercer Island, WA.

October 25^th, 2020

Informant Data:

Eric was born in Seattle, WA in 1998 to a Hawaiian mother and a German father. Eric grew up in Mercer Island, WA, and currently attends the University of Washington, where he is studying biology. He visits his mother’s family in Hawaii about once a year but has lost touch with much of his Hawaiian culture.

Contextual Data:

Cultural Context: In the Hawaiian culture, the baby’s first birthday is considered a very significant milestone. The tradition itself arises from ancient ceremonies called “aha’aina” which means “gathering for a feast.” First birthdays were a segment of these large ceremonies because children who beat the odds of childbirth were presented with large feasts. Nowadays, the first birthday, or ‘baby luau,’ is more centered around starting a long and healthy life for the child. Also, the term ‘luau’ arose in the 1850s, referring to the food being served on luau leaves.

Social Context: The ‘baby luau’ is centered around the large feast that feeds the large number of people attending the celebration. Many people of the extended family bring smaller plates of food to add to the traditional servings, like the roasted pig. The food is served buffet-style on a big table called a ‘pupu line.’ Often these celebrations have a party theme, something kid-related like certain toys, cartoons, or sports. People will bring gifts related to this theme or possibly monetary gifts.

Item:

When Eric was much younger, he attended an extended family member’s baby luau in Kauai, one of the smaller Hawaiian Islands. He recalls seeing hundreds of people attending the ceremony and lots of food lining a long table. However, his most significant memory of the baby luau was the sports-themed party. He recalls napkins with sports balls on them, balloons with team logos, and lots of other kids playing around the party, passing soccer balls and footballs. This theme even extended into the clothing that the hosts and the baby were wearing. Eric knew of the luau themes but has never seen another luau dedicate so much effort to consolidating so many celebration aspects around the theme.

Mitchell Meade

Hanover, NH

Dartmouth College

RUSS 13 Fall 2020

Customary/Ritual

Jewish 13^th Birthday

Susanne Sherman

Seattle, WA.

November 3^rd, 2020

Informant Data:

Susanne was born in Czechoslovakia in 1935 in a Jewish family of four and moved to Seattle, WA to escape persecution during WWII. She moved with her sister and parents, arriving with little belongings. Susanne graduated from the University of Washington in 1957 and worked as a speech pathologist for her entire career. After her husband’s passing, she raised her three kids alone for several years before remarrying. She is now retired and lives in a suburb of Seattle.

Contextual Data:

Cultural Context: In the Jewish culture, the 13^th birthday is the age at which boys and girls host a bar or bat mitzvah, a coming of age ceremony. This ceremony represents the transition to religious adulthood. This event consists of both formal and informal rituals and ceremonies. After completion of the bar/bat mitzvah, the boy or girl is considered a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’ and is expected to continue actively participating in Jewish rituals going forward.

Social Context: There are several important aspects of the bar mitzvah: the night-before dinner with close family, the official bar mitzvah ceremony, and the celebration after the ceremony. During the night-before dinner, the entire extended family comes together to celebrate the bar mitzvah and bequest significant gifts to the bar mitzvah. This is a more intimate celebration than the one that occurs after the ceremony. During the official ceremony itself, the bar mitzvah recites the Torah portion he/she has been practicing for months or years in advance to demonstrate their dedication to the Torah. They then give their modern interpretation of the portion in front of the entire audience, which can be hundreds of people. The bar mitzvah wears formal clothes, often with a Tallit (shawl) or kippah (small circular hat for boys). The celebration afterward consists of a night of food and dancing with all family and friends of the bar mitzvah. Often, classic Jewish dances are spread throughout the party. Friends and family usually bring gifts for the new adult, either something physical of significance or money.

Item:

All of Susanne’s children and grandchildren have held bar or bat mitzvahs when they turned thirteen. For their formal outfits, all three used her same Tallit during the ceremony which had been passed down to her from her parents and has recently been passed down to one of her grandchildren. In addition to this common Jewish article of clothing, almost every monetary gift she, her children, or her grandchildren received was an amount that was a multiple of $18, such as $36, $72, or $180. She said that the number eighteen represents life in the Jewish culture, so the gift in that multiple represents giving the new adult life. In all the post-ceremony celebrations she has attended, she recalls that at one point, the Horah was performed, which is where the bar mitzvah gets lifted into the air on a chair and the people dance around them in a circle. She notes that this dance is rooted in marriage ceremonies, but because of how enjoyable the dance is, it has spread to other celebrations in Jewish culture, such as the bar mitzvah.

Mitchell Meade

Hanover, NH

Dartmouth College

RUSS 13 Fall 2020

Customary/Ritual

American/Czech 18^th Birthday

Susanne Sherman

Seattle, WA.

November 3^rd, 2020

Informant Data:

Susanne was born in Czechoslovakia in 1935 and moved to Seattle, WA to escape persecution during WWII. She moved with her sister and parents, arriving with little belongings. Susanne graduated from the University of Washington in 1957 and worked as a speech pathologist for her entire career. After her husband’s passing, she raised her three kids alone for several years before remarrying. She is now retired and lives in a suburb of Seattle.

Contextual Data:

Cultural Context: In the United States, the 18^th birthday represents legal adulthood. This is cause for celebration as this birthday comes with certain privileges, including voting rights and the ability to buy certain products (cigarettes, fireworks, tattoos). These privileges are considered less significant than being able to drink alcohol when turning 21 but are still significant enough that people will go out and utilize their new privileges on their 18^th birthday solely because they can. These are often compounded with parties to celebrate adulthood, often with friends and family.

Social Context: Although the 18^th birthday in America presents people with new opportunities that come with legal adulthood, often these opportunities are not taken advantage of or immediately relevant, such as voting, where most people have to wait months or years to use their voting rights. To accommodate for this people will often host parties to celebrate the general milestone of becoming a legal adult. This can include hosting family and friends or having a smaller party with more significant activities or gifts. Usually, these activities or gifts will hold special value for the birthday boy or girl or represent a family tradition.

Item:

When Susanne was young her mother used to make a special birthday cake for her and her sister’s birthdays. This cake was special because it didn’t contain any flour, but ground nuts, which was considered very fancy in Czechoslovakia at the time. When they moved to the United States, they left a privileged life behind as they were not able to bring many belongings with them. In hopes of continuing this Czech birthday tradition, Susanne would make this fancy cake for her children’s 18th birthdays. Although most Americans celebrate birthdays with cakes, this one was significant to her and her family because it represented the ancestors they lost, which made it more special than any gift she could give. The cake would take many hours to make, so it was not reasonable to make it every year for each of her kids. Her kids knew how much effort she put into the cake and how significant the cake was to her and to the family in general.

Mitchell Meade

Hanover, NH

Dartmouth College

RUSS 13 Fall 2020

Customary/Ritual

Chinese 18th Birthday

EC

Massachusetts

November 9th, 2020

Informant Data:

EC is a senior at Dartmouth College majoring in chemistry and on the pre-med track. She was born and raised in Massachusetts, though her parents both immigrated to the U.S. from China and most of her relatives live there. She grew up with a younger sister who is also applying to Dartmouth, and plans to be a doctor after med-school.

Contextual Data:

Cultural Context: In China, the 18th birthday represents a coming-of-age. It marks the year an individual can legally drink and is considered a legal adult. Similar to India, the 21st birthday is not very significant in China, as the 18th birthday takes its place.

Social Context: For the 18th birthday in China, the celebration revolves around family, drinking, and food. One common Chinese ritual is eating enough eggs to count one’s age, though this usually is impossible to actually accomplish.

Item:

This information is paraphrased from notes taken during EC’s Zoom interview.

EC celebrated her 18th birthday twice, in both the U.S. and China. In the U.S., she celebrated with her family at home. Food is a very important part of the celebration, and her parents made soup, noodles, eggs, dumplings, and sticky rice with bean paste. After dinner there was a break period before a cake celebration. For a Chinese birthday, fruit cakes are traditional.

In China, EC’s relatives threw a large party with many of her extended family, including very distant cousins. The festivities occur at night, and there’s a lot of food and drinking, with an emphasis on local dishes. Though EC didn’t do this herself, there’s also sometimes a religious element related to Buddhist traditions, in which the birthday person visits a few temples in the area to pray for good fortune.

Gift from relatives use include traditional red packets with money inside, or jewelry that’s related to EC’s Chinese birth year, like a rabbit jade necklaces.

Allison Hufford, 21

Dartmouth College

RUSS 13

Fall 2020

Customary/Ritual

Indian 18th Birthday

SC

India

November 9th, 2020

Informant Data:

SC is a senior at Dartmouth College majoring in computer science and economics. He’s an international student, born and raised in India in a big house with many of his extended family, including a large number of cousins. He grew up with two older sisters who now reside in London and Canada, and plans to move to Chicago after graduation to work in finance.

Contextual Data:

Cultural Context: In India, the 18th birthday represents a huge coming-of-age, as it marks the year an individual can legally drive, legally drink, is graduating high school, and is considered a legal adult. It fills the role of both the 18th and 21st birthday in the U.S., as the 21st birthday in India is not usually considered significant.

Social Context: Drinking is the major element of the Indian 21st birthday. Birthdays are generally a bigger deal in India than in the U.S., according to SC. Throughout childhood, ‘return gifts’ during birthday parties are common, much like goodie bags. According to Indian tradition, rather than the friends treating the birthday person, the birthday person must treat their friends, throwing the party and buying all the drinks and dinners. That’s their social responsibility as the birthday person.

Item:

This information is paraphrased from notes taken during SC’s Zoom interview.

On SC’s 21st birthday, his friends came over to his house exactly at midnight, and that was when the party began. The moment it started, at midnight, they smashed a cake directly in his face – a tradition for all Indian birthdays. Then, they took a bottle of alcohol and made him start chugging, and the rest of the night was spent drinking and encouraging SC to drink as much as he could. Even though SC’s birthdays was during final exams, a very busy and stressful time, it was still celebrated to its full potential, as that is how important birthdays are in India. By the morning, everyone had gotten very drunk and was extremely hungover.

Allison Hufford, 21

Dartmouth College

RUSS 13

Fall 2020

Customary/Ritual

American 21st Birthday

WB

Virginia, U.S.

November 7th, 2020

Informant Data:

WB is a senior at Dartmouth College majoring in computer science. He was born and raised in Massachusetts by two Christian parents and with an older brother. Last winter, he spent his off-term interning at a large company in D.C., during which time he turned 21.

Contextual Data:

Cultural Context: In the United States, unlike in other cultures, individuals cannot legally drink until they reach the age of 21. Because of this, the 21st birthday is a milestone birthday in that it marks a person’s ‘first legal drink’ within the United States, though many individuals have likely drank beforehand.

Social Context: Drinking is the major element of the American 21st birthday. Often, individuals go out with friends or coworkers to bars in order to order their first legal drink. Sometimes they are goaded by their friends to take ’21 shots for 21 years,’ or even repeatedly ‘iced’ – a ritual in which drinks are hidden randomly around a common area, and the person who finds them has to finish the drink.

Item:

This information is paraphrased from notes taken during WB’s Zoom interview.

WB worked on his 21st birthday, and though his coworker had asked him offhandedly when his birthday was a few weeks beforehand, nobody brought it up to him. However, at the end of the day WB left the team room and entered the kitchen, where all of his coworkers jumped out and shouted “surprise!” They had bought him an array of alcoholic beverages: champagne, and a few kinds of beers. They threw him a small party, popping the champagne and sharing it with all his coworkers. This was on a Tuesday, and on the following Friday night he had a party at his house with all his friends, where they drank, iced each other, and played party games.

Allison Hufford, 21

Dartmouth College

RUSS 13

Fall 2020