General Information:
Title: Homecoming Bonfire
Form of Folklore: Customary, bonfire festival
Language: English
Place of Origin: Hanover, NH, United States
Informant: M.S.
Date Collected: October 30th, 2021
Informant Data:
M.S. is a 19-year-old member of the Dartmouth class of 2025, the most recent class at Dartmouth. She is currently undecided on her major but wants to potentially study economics. She is from New York City and very excited to have moved to the more slow environment of New Hampshire. She enjoys to ski and is part of the apprenti class that is trying out for the Dartmouth Ski Patrol.
Contextual Data:
– Social Context: Every term Dartmouth has a ‘big weekend’ of celebrations, and in the fall this is ‘Homecoming Weekend’. While many instantiations of traditions are aimed at the freshmen during this weekend, the whole weekend stands as a yearly tradition for all students and a lot of alumni who will come back and visit for the weekend. The weekend features Dartmouth’s football team playing the ‘homecoming game’, and the school organizes parades, speeches, and a large bonfire that all alumni and students gather around. The bonfire is used as part of a freshman-specific tradition every year. It is the first ‘big weekend’ that freshmen get to experience, and because they typically hear a lot about it from upperclassmen they often look very forward to it.
– Cultural Context: The bonfire, specifically, features a freshman specific tradition where the whole class walks a lap around the bonfire. Typically, they are heckled by upperclassmen who are watching the bonfire lap, and these upperclassmen were again heckled by their seniors when they were freshmen. The bonfire lap is a once-in-a-Dartmouth-career experience, and because all students have participated once it stands as a well cemented and anticipated tradition every year.
Item:
The homecoming bonfire is organized by the College, and it is built in the middle of the Dartmouth Green. The wooden panels are decorated by various student organizations, who send their freshmen members to paint a panel. The top of the wooden structure is decorated by wooden numerals of the graduating year of the freshmen. Surrounding the bonfire is a large audience of current students and alumni. While the fire burns on the Friday of homecoming, the freshman walk a lap around the fire and are heckled by upperclassmen. Various traditional heckles are yelled, like “you are the worst class ever” and “touch the fire”. The latter emerged a few years ago, when the school took strict action to ensure that students didn’t run close to the fire.
Associated File:
Image courtesy of Dartmouth, the Dartmouth Review
Transcript:
Collector: “Why did you take part in traditions such as the Homecoming Bonfire?”
Informant: “I think it just makes me feel more part of the community. Also it’s very fun. Like the bonfire, a lot of my friends were joking that it’s like an initiation into the Dartmouth cult. And it kind of felt like that, it was fun. It’s like, I did it now. I’m part of that community that walks around the bonfire. Also, growing up in the city I didn’t have a football team or any homecoming big experience like a lot of my friends here did. I was just super excited to go to a football game for a school, my school, and it was just a cool way to show school pride. And the bonfire added to that, making the whole homecoming weekend into a big and special event.”
Collector Comment:
Reflecting on my own homecoming bonfire experience, I felt very similar to M.S. I felt that I had participated in an event that all students before me had as well, welcoming me into the community. Like M.S., I had never attended a school with a football team or any homecoming traditions, and the bonfire made the whole weekend feel even more special and community-oriented, beyond just school spirit for the football team.
Collected By:
Una Westvold
Oslo, Norway
Hanover, NH
Dartmouth College
RUSS 013
Fall 2021