The Ritual Year 1 ( 2006)
This volume, edited by George Mifsud-Chircop, contains a
selection 
of the papers given at a conference held in Malta on 20-24 March 2005. Besides the papers listed below, it includes introductory and closing remarks by George Mifsud-Chircop, Emily Lyle, Manwel Mifsud, Paul Clough, Terry Gunnell, Jeremy Boissevain, Vilmos Voigt and Francis Zammit-Dimech.
It is published and distributed by Publishers Enterprises Group (PEG) Ltd, San Gwan, Malta. (http://www.prg.com.mt)
Email: contact@peg.com.mt
ISBN 978-99909-0-442-0
Jeremy Boissevain
Changing Aspects of Parish Rituals in Malta (1960-2000)
Intensely Roman Catholic, Maltese parishioners celebrate numerous calendrical rituals. The most important of these are the annual festa of the parish’s patron saint and Holy Week. Following their curtailment during World War II, parish celebrations slowly recovered, only to decline somewhat in the late 1950s, partly due to heavy emigration. By the mid-1970s a revitalization of parish rituals were noticeable. Factors influencing this revitalization include the country’s growing affluence, the democratization of public rituals, government’s attempt to regiment aspects of these celebrations, the steady increase of the tourist interest in these folk celebrations, and the developing awareness by the bourgeois establishment that traditional ritual pageantry was an important element of the nation’s cultural heritage.
Keywords: Malta, heritage, Roman Catholic, Easter, emigration, tourism, revitalization
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 23-32
Anna Borg-Cadona
Evidence of Ancient Ritual in Malta’s Musical Instruments
If one examines the dates of our Christian festivities, the majority will be found to fall on or around the time of previous pre-Christian seasonal rituals. That which for centuries formed part of the local culture prior to Christianity was not automatically erased or discarded with the arrival of the new religion. Many of the ingrained ancient customs were tenaciously clung to and were transferred into a new context and given a new meaning. This paper treats musical instruments, especially the natural cow horn and the friction drum, which originally pertained to primitive ritual functions but which have managed to persist into modern days during certain times of the year or in connection with a particular function or festivity.
Keywords: Malta, music, friction drum, cow horn, festivity, Christianity, pagan
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 33-44
Carmel Cassar
The Maltese Festa. A Historical and Cultural Perspective
The elaborate and colourful manifestation of this Maltese tradition began to emerge in the eighteenth century and reached its present form by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In Malta, the rural aspects of life conditioned the way people perceived time and space. Religion surrounded food with rules, rituals, and prohibitions and was eaten partly on the Church’s orders. Petitional and penitential processions were often undertaken at the behest of the community as a response to natural disasters and celebratory processions, such as the ones held after liberation from catastrophic plagues, were also highly in demand. The inclusion of the titular saint in parish processions on the day of the festa was a development of the eighteenth century.
Keywords: Malta, Christian Church, processions, penance, celebration, saints, festivals
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 45-87
Joseph F. Grima
The Development of the Holy Week Processions at Qormi, Malta
The Qormi Good Friday procession originated over 250 years ago but one cannot pin down the exact date when it was first organised. It was certainly well-established by 1764 when there is the first recorded written reference to it in the diary of the scholarly priest Ignazio Savario Mifsud. The Easter Sunday procession can perhaps be dated to the second half of the eighteenth century on the evidence of oral tradition and the texture of the statue. The paper discusses the eighteenth century processions and developments in the nineteenth century and between 1900 and 1940 and the consolidisation that took place after 1950. The organization of the processions and the participation of band clubs are also discussed.
Keywords: Malta, Christianity, Easter, processions, band clubs, historical development
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 88-102
Giovanna Iacovazzi
Paraliturgical Music in Malta. An Ethnomusicological Perspective
The music of Malta occupies a central role in the everyday life of the Maltese people, notably during the numerous festivals dedicated to the patron saints of each village. On these occasions the different bands, the fanfares, play a crucial role. They are not only called upon to accompany the procession but have to stay also throughout the festivities. This study explores the relation between music and rituals in Maltese culture and society. The ethnography focuses on the festival of Santa Maria Mater Gratiae in Żabbar, and the analysis considers the role of music in the light of François Picard’s fundamental notion of musiques paraliturgiques (La musique chinoise, 1991), which can be inserted into rituals although not essential to them.
Keywords: Malta, music, festivals, patron saints, rituals, paraliturgical
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 103-10
George Mifsud-Chircop
Ritual and Drama in Malta’s Past Carnival
Since mediaeval times carnival in Malta has always been accompanied by parades, masquerades, pageants, and other forms of revelry recalling pre-Christian pagan rites. From the mid eighteenth century down to 1798 when Malta was under the rule of the Knights of the Order of St John, revelry was part of daily life much as it was in other European countries. A particular manuscript evinces the popularity among the lower classes of a rustic folk drama, known as Il-Qarċilla. It demonstrates the community’s right to eliminate temporarily all differences and hierarchical barriers, abolishing taboos that prevail in real life and creating a particular type of communication. It expresses its concerns about and attitudes to life in a way that escapes censorship.
Keywords: Malta, carnival, parades, pageants, ritual, darma, popular culture
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 111-34
Anthony Pace
The Emergence of Maltese Ritual Funerary Monuments between 4000 and 2500 B. C.
Foremost in importance among the repertoire of Malta’s prehistoric antiquities are a series of cemeteries which are characterised by subterranean chambers, thus marking a clear distinction with above ground architecture of the same period. At least three classes of buildings are known from Maltese prehistory: domestic, cemeteries and large architectural complexes that are often referred to as temples, although these types of buildings are not exclusive of others that may have once dotted the archipelago’s landscape. Maltese prehistoric monuments have come to represent much of current knowledge of what is often referred to as the temple period (4000-2500 BC). These three classes of structures served as the main recipients of symbolic meanings of a type often associated with architecture.
Keywords: Malta, prehistory, subterranean chambers, temples, funerary, symbolism
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 135-65
Maria Teresa Agozzino
Divining King Arthur: The Calendric Significance of Twelfth Century Cathedral Depictions in Italy
The sixth-century pagan Welsh legendary figure of King Arthur appears in two twelfth-century renderings in the Italian cathedrals of Modena and Otranto respectively. This paradoxical conflation of a secular Celtic legend cycle and sacred continental high-religious art may be explained in part as Christian appropriation of pre-existing folklore. However, when considered contextually and intertextually, I suggest that we are witnessing the popular medieval tradition of mock battles, in which the critical winter/summer opposition is managed. This paper proposes a hitherto uninvestigated hypothesis, based on close examination and comparison of the artistic symbolism and drawing on folkloric empirical evidence, anthropological theoretical paradigms, Indo-European proto structures and Medieval Welsh narratives, which together reveal and reflect a complex yet fundamental folk belief system.
Keywords: King Arthur, Italy, cathedrals, images, mock battles, opposition, Welsh tales
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 167-80
Arne Bugge Amundsen
St Olav’s Day in Norway – Invented Tradition or Old Popular Feast Day?
The national saint of Medieval Norway, King Olav Haraldsson (d. 1030) was for centuries the centre of a series of rituals, hymns and procession, the most important date of the St Olav rituals during the liturgical year being the day of his martyrdom, 29th July, which was called Olsok. After the Lutheran reformation in Norway in 1537, these rituals were prohibited but popular feast traditions remained. In the late nineteenth century, Norwegian nationalists tried to re-ritualize Olsok as a meeting place between historical traditions and ecclesiastical symbols. The new, nationalistic Olsok rituals focussed on flags, dancing, historical tableaux, national speeches, youth performances and church services. This paper examines what happened when these new nationalistic efforts met older, popular feast traditions.
Keywords: Norway, St Olav, Lutheran, reformation, popular traditions, nationalism
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 181-91
Tommy U. Andersson and Ritwa Herjulfsdotter
A Spring Procession from the Bronze Age depicted on a Rock-Carving in Högsbyn, Western Sweden
This paper discusses the form and character of the depiction of a procession with ships, animals, instruments and human figures in Bronze Age rock carvings from the west of Sweden at Högsbyn in Dalsland which were probably executed in a relatively brief 300-400 year period towards the end of the Bronze Age. The paper suggests that Högsbyn may have been a seasonal cult site, only visited during the spring and autumn and connected with fertility rites. In the folklore of both Scandinavia and Western Europe there are traces of ceremonies in which ships were borne over fields in spring as part of fertility rites. The paper views the procession as a seasonal marker at the vernal equinox.
Keywords: Sweden, Bronze Age, rock carvings, cult site, ships, fertility, equinox, spring
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 192-9
Marion Bowman
Reclaiming Glastonbury: Processions as Pageantry, Protest and Power
Glastonbury, a small town in the south-west of England, is considered significant by a wide variety of spiritual seekers. Although generally groups and individuals of very different religious persuasion co-exist comparatively peacefully, increasingly some rivalries are played out in the form of processions. The Anglican Glastonbury Pilgrimage, revived in the 1920s, and followed in the 1950s by a Roman Catholic Pilgrimage with procession, together in a sense reclaimed Glastonbury for Christianity. However, since 1996, there has been processional activity connected with the annual Glastonbury Goddess Conference, always held around the “Celtic” festival of Lammas / Lughnasa (1 August). The development of this tradition, its fluid nature and the different agendas that it addresses are the main focus of the paper.
Keywords: England, Glastonbury, spirituality, processions, Christianity, goddess, Celtic
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 200-8
Molly Carter
Who is Jack a Lent? Personifications of Shrovetide and Lent in 16th and 17th Century England
This paper explores the figure of “Jack a Lent” and other personifications of Lent and Shrovetide depicted in the art, drama, literature, folk customs and proverbial expressions of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. One type of Jack a Lent was a kind of effigy set up on Ash Wednesday and pelted with sticks until Easter. In proverbial language, “jack a lent” became a synonym for “scapegoat”. The other type of Jack a Lent, found in drama, literature and art, was a symbol of Lent in allegories imparting moral instruction and often humorous social commentary. There he was pictured as an emaciated figure surrounded by herrings and other symbols of Lenten fasting.
Keywords: England, Lent, Shrovetide, folk customs, scapegoat, fasting, drama, allegory
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 209-26
Swietlana M. Czerwonnaja
Spring National ‘Holidays of the Plough / Holidays of the Sowing Campaign’: Experiences of the Twentieth Century
The spring “Holiday of the Plough” belonged to the agricultural traditions of the Turkish peoples of Eurasia. It was not adopted wholly by Islam or Christianity but preserved elements of primeval magic. The Soviet authorities were tolerant towards those holidays and their rites, trying not to notice their pagan essence and considering them “Holidays of Workers”. Such holidays were permitted in the Soviet Union from the late 1930s and played an important role in the ethnic mobilization of the Turkish peoples. They became the object of idealization and a main motif of national painting and poetry that tried to show the “beautiful and heroic character” of the people in scenes of athletic competitions, crowd merry-making, folk round-dances and other rites.
Keywords: Turkish peoples, Soviet Union, agricultural year, pagan, holidays, representation
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 227-32
Kristín Einarsdóttir
Ash Wednesday Celebrations in Iceland. A Historical and Contemporary Comparison
On the morning of Ash Wednesday in Iceland, the streets of the capital city of Reykjavík, and also the villages, tend to be crowded with a strange assemblage of children dressed as witches, cats, etc. who go from shop to shop, singing all kinds of songs, and receiving sweets and other edibles. The custom can be examined in terms of the implicit conflict between the modern tradition and that which was known by many parents and shop workers in rural societies. One older tradition on Ash Wednesday was for the girls to try to hang a bag of ash on a boy without his knowledge, and for the boys to try to hide a stone in a girl’s clothing.
Keywords: Iceland, Ash Wednesday, disguise, children’s customs, songs, ash
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 233-40
Maxim Fomin
Celebrating Easter in Early Ireland: Account of Religious Conversion in Vita Sancti Patricii
When describing St. Patrick’s conversion of Ireland, Muirchú – the author of Vita Prima Sancti Patricii – tells us: “I.13 In those days Easter was approaching. … Saint Patrick decided that this great feast of the Lord … should be celebrated … where was the greatest kingdom among these tribes.” Muirchú also states that the celebration of Easter coincided with the celebration of the local festival. This festival, when the king ceremonially lit the first fire of the kingdom in his palace at Tara, was on 1 November. When Patrick lit a fire in his tent before the king lit his in his palace, he thereby seized the sovereignty and the king was compelled to accept the superiority of the Christian faith.
Keywords: Ireland, Christianity, conversion, pagan, St Patrick, Easter, Tara, fire
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 241-56
Sebastien Laurent Fournier
Agrarian Festivals and the Ritual Year in Mediterranean France – Preserving Traditions or Building Heritage?
This paper deals with the “revitalization” of traditional rituals and the cultural valorization of popular festivals in a contemporary context. Two case studies relating to agricultural products are presented: 1. Saint-Eloi festivals. These festivals linked with the ritual cycle of corn-harvest are today presenting themselves as an authentic evidence of local traditional culture. Structured by the blessing and the procession of richly harnessed draught horses, these festivals have a circle-based symbolism. 2. Festivals devoted to olive products. Invented in the 1970s, these festivals are concerned with products that were very little valorized in the traditional ritual year, and they use agricultural products in order to drive a new local dynamic, which is commercial, touristic, and concerned with local identity.
Keywords: France, agrarian festivals, traditions, heritage, tourism, harvest, horses, olives
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 257-70
Margaret Gouin
Ethnography in Shangri-la: Tibetan Buddhist Funerals as Folk Religion
The “Tibetan Book of the Dead” – first published in English translation in 1927 and continuously in print ever since – has been hailed in Europe and North America as setting out a “science of death” of universal validity, applicable across all cultures. But it contains no information on such practical elements of a funeral as, for example, how to dispose of the body, mourning and commemoration. Perhaps as a consequence of the perceived universality of the Tibetan Buddhist philosophy of death and dying, the issue of how funerals are performed in the context of “ordinary” Tibetan life has been somewhat obscured in Western scholarship. This paper seeks to elaborate some initial directions for ethnographic study.
Keywords: Tibet, Buddhism, death, dying, funerals, ethnography, folk religion
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 271-84
Terry Gunnell
Ritual Space. Ritual Year. Ritual Gender – A View of the Old Norse and New Icelandic Ritual Year
Icelandic calendar festivals are essentially celebrations of family identity. For Icelanders, the concept of “family” is an essential feature of national identity, but it extends far beyond the immediate family to the extended family past and present, and (since everyone in Iceland is “related” in one way or other) to the school class, the workplace and the family as a whole. In general the year festivals thus range from the large outside “national” family celebrations of the summer to the intimate, closed door, essentially indoor festivals of Christmas. This pattern of: indoor / closed family / household / female environment / winter vs. outdoor / national family / fields / male environment / summer, appears to have Old Norse roots.
Keywords: Iceland, gender, family, Old Norse, national, oppositions, winter, summer
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 285-302
Evy Johanne Håland
The Ritual Year as a Woman’s life: The Festivals of the Agricultural Cycle, Life-Cycle Passages of Mother Goddesses and Fertility-Cult
In Greek culture, an offering or a gift, is dedicated to a deceased guardian of society, alone or together with a god (dess), for instance to the modern Panagia (the Virgin Mary) or to the ancient goddesses, Demeter or Athena. In the festivals, the deceased mediator receives an ox- or lamb-offering, in order to provide for the fertility of society through communication with stronger powers, first and foremost, Mother Earth. Her importance parallels woman’s, the latter being the central performer of the cults, which are important in the festivals, because they are connected to the female sphere. Greeks conceive Earth as a woman’s body and the agricultural year as a woman’s life. This paper explores the parallels between the two.
Keywords: Greece, Virgin Mary, Demeter, festivals, life cycle, Mother Earth, female
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 302-26
Ritwa Herjulfsdotter
Charms and the Ritual Year
Some of the many charms to be found in the Swedish archives are connected with the ritual year. There were several precautionary measures when cows were about to graze for the first time in spring. Charms (called “pasture prayers”) were chanted and cows might be made to walk over a knife or keys to reinforce the precautions. Unmarried women pronounced charms on St Lucia’s Day to discover who their future husbands would be. On Maundy Thursday, a charm was spoken on a hilltop to draw vital force away from one’s neighbour’s cattle and give it to one’s own cattle. It is interesting to find that several charms can be connected to Catholic blessings centuries after the Reformation.
Keywords: Sweden, charms, cattle, St Lucia’s Day, divination, knife, Reformation
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 327-31
Marlene Hugoson
Easter Trees and Easter Parades in Sweden: New Phenomena and Older Traditions
The Easter trees and Easter parades that have developed in Sweden are interesting because they represent new phenomena with connections to, and similarities with, older traditions such as the Christmas tree, the Maypole, processions and mumming (besides the obvious connection to the gathering and decoration of Easter twigs). They can be interpretad as both renewing older traditions in a time of great cultural change and as institutionalization as a children’s Easter celebration has been transformed from creative play for a specific age group into an activity organized and planned on a larger scale by adults.
Keywords: Sweden, Easter, Easter trees, Easter parades, cultural change, children’s custom
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 332-9
Mare Koiva
Easter in Estonia
The most popular Easter custom in Estonia, as elsewhere in Europe, was decorating and eating Easter eggs and giving these as gifts: this is the main private symbol of the date in popular culture. In the Orthodox regions of South Estonia it was also customary to roll the eggs, either downhill or along a special wooden channel. The nineteenth century witnessed the custom of hiding Easter eggs so that children could search for them, and the custom of preserving some Easter eggs. The first documented report about eggs delivered by the Easter bunny originates in Germany in 1572. An important part of the twentieth-century Estonian tradition was self-made or printed cards sent to friends and family.
Keywords: Estonia, Easter, Easter eggs, Easter bunny, Easter cards, Orthodox Church
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 340-61
Aado Lintrop
Liminal Periods in the Udmurt Ritual Year
The Udmurts are a Finno-Ugric people who in 2002 numbered 636,935, most of them living in the Udmurt Republic of the Russian Federation. There are two main liminal periods in the Udmurt folk calendar – the period after winter solstice is called vozhodyr (time of the vozho [spirits]), and the period after summer solstice invozho dyr (time of the heavenly vozho). The winter vozho-time was the main story-telling and riddle time; vozhodyr is the period for mumming. The Christmas mummers were believed to bring luck in herding and this relates them to the souls of ancestors, who were considered the primary bringers of herding luck in many cultures. They were addressed as the vozho, which were undoubtedly related to ancestors.
Keywords: Russian Federation, Udmurts, liminal periods, solstice, mummers, ancestors
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 362-72
Emily Lyle
The Question of the Ritual Year and the Answers to it
It is necessary to address the basic question concerning the nature and identity of the ritual year. Throughout Europe over many centuries there has been a layer of Christian liturgy but it is clearly parasitic on what preceded it and the preceding free-standing ritual year is of special interest and is particularly elusive. This is why, the title of this paper speaks of answers to the question rather than one answer. We can expect debate with some scholars wishing to emphasise the agricultural year, or the pastoral year, or the astronomical year, or some other formulation. The approach here emphasizes analogical thinking and takes the human life cycle as a key to the understanding of the patterning of the year.
Keywords: Europe, prehistory, ritual year, Christian liturgy, pagan, analogy, life cycle,
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 373-81
Nancy Cassell McEntire
International Considerations of the April Fool
In North America, Europe, New Zealand and Australia, the first day in April is an unofficial holiday that is marked by pranks and lies. April Fools’ Day inspires even the most rational person to play a prank on a spouse, a relative, or a co-worker, all the while keeping a watchful eye on those who might have their own pranks in mind. This paper examines traditional disorderly behaviours from a variety of cultures. For one day of the year, April Fools’ pranksters enjoy temporary societal acceptance of behaviour that could otherwise be regarded as intolerable. By removing its participants from normal life, April Fools’ Day serves to confirm – or to question – what normal life really is.
Keywords: April Fools’ Day, pranks, jokes, reversal, disorderly behaviour, holiday
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 382-95
Lina Midholm
The Ritual Year through a Folklore Archive
The folklore archive in Gothenburg is mainly based on oral traditions. Collecting started in 1919 when archivists along with other folklore enthusiasts went out into the countryside to ask the people about their beliefs, superstitions and customs. Accounts dealing with the ritual year and also the calendar are very common. For example, some of the first collected accounts from 1919 are essays on the topic “Lucia in my District” and “St Canute’’s Day in my District”. This paper shows how the ritual year is represented in, and reshaped through, a folklore archive. It deals with the way society has had a major influence on the selection of our cultural heritage and the collecting of memories from the past.
Keywords: Sweden, Gothenburg, archive, superstitions, calendar, cultural heritage, memory
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 396-402
Katya Mihailova
Contemporary Political Carnival Procession on Palm Sunday in Bulgaria
In Bulgaria, traditional folklore feasts with new content are connected mainly with spring holidays before Easter. A typical example is the carnival procession “The Flowers for Democracy” which was organized for the first time on Palm Sunday 1990 . This paper examines the functional characteristics of contemporary carnival, with special emphasis on the particular methods and ritual practice through which the concrete functions of the carnival procession are achieved: contrast, rejection and provocation of official political authority, mocking and deheroization of political leaders from the old totalitarian times, violating the norms, stereotypes, symbols and values of the old political power, and the desacralization of the prophetic ideas of yesterday.
Keywords: Bulgaria, political folklore, Palm Sunday, carnival, desacralization, totalitarian
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 403-10
Tatiana Minniyakhmetova
The Role of Symbols’ Reflexivity in Calendar Rites: An Example of Trans-Kama Udmurts
The trans-Kama Udmurts live in the mid-west of the Ural mountains on the left bank of the Kama River in Russia and are still heathens today. This paper discusses the concept of reflexivity of symbols in calendar rituals. The ritual calendar aims also to maintain and keep continuity. This can be accomplished in different ways. One of them is the ritual symbols. However, the most effective connection is displayed in the reflexivity of these symbols, represented in verbal expressions, actions or behaviour of people, and real objects. All of these symbols are aimed at survival. The concept and representation of reflexivity is constantly presented in the consciousness of the people. It regulates their actions and behaviour.
Keywords: Udmurts, heathen, reflexivity, ritual, symbols, calendar, continuity
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 411-19
Giovanni Orlando Muraca
Scourging Rituals in Southern Italy
In the south of Italy, many expressions of popular Catholicism have resisted the wear and tear of time. Two scourging rituals take place annually during the Good Friday processions in Calabria – in Nocera Terinere, in the province of Catanzaro and in Verbicaro in the province of Casenza – and a third is held in Guardia Sanframondi in the processional context of the Ascension of Our Lady in August, once every seven years, or on exceptional occasions. Although recently the rites have undergone processes of transformation, they recall the archaic symbology linked to blood – from early human sacrifices to mystery pre-Christian rites, to reach the penitential exercise of the battenti or scougers which developed in the Christian Middle Ages.
Keywords: Italy, Catholicism, Good Friday, Easter, scourging, processions, blood, penance
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 420-5
Annika Nordström
Christmas in Sweden 2004: Tendencies in New Research Material
Documents concerning annual festivities belong to the oldest and most requested material in the Folklore Archives at Gothenburg. Previously there have been small opportunities to research the variations and multiplicity of today, but in May 2004 a project group was started concerning the Ritual Year within the Swedish Institute for Dialectology, Onomastics and Folklore Research (SOFI). Together with other folklore archives and institutes, we have decided to cooperate in the field, beginning with our first common topic, Christmas 2004. The archives and institutions involved are the three folklore departments within SOFI – in Uppsala, Umeå and Gothenburg, Nordiska Museet in Stockholm, Folklivsarkivet in Lund, Mångkulturellt centrum in Fittja (The Multicultural Centre), Göteborg City Museum and the Department of Ethnology, Göteborg University.
Keywords: Sweden, archives, variation, Christmas, new tendencies, fieldwork project
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 426-33
Ann Pettersson and Anna Ulfstrand
Genuine Swedish Christmas Food such as Lasagna! – Eleven Ways of Spending Christmas in Contemporary Sweden
For several years the Multicultural Centre, situated at the outskirts of Stockholm, has been involved in a study called Holidays and Feasts: Folklore, Migration and Heritage. The main question is what happens to traditions and customs when they are transplanted to new cultural circumstances by migration.We decided that one way of mirroring this would be to ask a number of persons to put together a visual story on the way they celebrate Christmas by taking photos with a single-use camera that was handed out by us. Interviews were then conducted with the participants.. We decided to call this part of our study 24: December to stress the fact that Christmas is a holiday celebrated for both religious and non-religious reasons.
Keywords: Sweden, Christmas, multicultural, holidays, migration, photographs
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 434-41
Leander Petzoldt
Rituals of Magic
In rituals, magic or religious courses of action are manifest and are standardized and sanctioned by religion. They are frequently extremely monotonous because only their precise enactment guarantees their success. The tendency towards automatization and mechanization, inherent in rituals, often mingles the border between cultic rites (of high religion) and magic rituals. Closely connected with the instrumental character of magic is the belief in the automaticity of the effects of magic ritual. It is the belief of the magician in the supernatural results of his means, a quality shared by his clients, and the denial of the necessity to address a superior, helping assistance that brings him in direct opposition to the subservient and respectful-devotional behaviour of the “religious” person.
Keywords: rituals, magic, religion, supernatural powers, automaticity, devotional
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 442-52
Jonathan Roper
Christmas Mumming in Labrador
In some “outports” in south-eastern coastal Labrador, Canada, mumming takes place during the Christmas season. The mumming (seasonal house-visiting after dark and in disguise) used to be more widespread but has recently declined. Mumming, or jannying to use the more usual local term, occurs throughout the Twelve Days of Christmas, with the exception of Sundays and New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. This paper presents the current tradition, concentrating upon the “etiquette of mumming,” i.e., the reciprocal obligations of mummers and their hosts, and on the strategies used by the mummers, such features as “mummertalk” (ingressive speech), disguise by means of clothing, etc., used by the mummers (or janneys) to prolong the period before they are finally identified.
Keywords: Canada, Labrador, mumming, Twelve Days, New Year, disguise, reciprocity
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 453-8
Jan Rychlik
The Life Cycle, Agricultural Rites, and the Annual Ritual Cycle among Czechs and Slovaks
Life cycle and year cycle rituals were interconnected in the conditions of patriarchal closeness because the life of a peasant was deeply intertwined with nature. Czech and Slovak peasants were gradually transformed into modern farmers and, in the 1950s, the farmers became paid employees of large collective or state farms. This fact destroyed the year rituals because there was now no place for them. The rituals of the life cycle remained to some extent but lost their original significance. After the fall of the communist regime in 1989 and the gradual restitution of private farming the situation did not change. Today most farmers are entrepreneurs in agriculture rather than peasants and so there is very little space for classical rituals.
Keywords: Czech Republic, Slovakia, rituals, agriculture, calendar, life cycle, farms
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 459-71
Irina Sedakova
The Ritual Year as Reflected in Proverbs – General Notes
Particularly well known are proverbs and sayings which have a clear, non-metaphoric meaning and show the correlation between a Church calendric date (denoted mostly by the name of a saint) and the weather or provide agricultural advice or pastoral practice, etc. Other proverbs have a metaphorical meaning and can be used in the context of a whole range of situations. Although the set of holidays chosen by each folk paremiological tradition within Europe may be different, the major principles of mentioning a rite in a proverb have universal value and correspond to the structural and semiotic rules of the folklore genre. The paper explores these ideas in the framework of proverbs containing allusions to the Slavic Orthodox Ritual Year.
Keywords: proverbs, Slavic, Orthodox Church, saints’ days, weather, metaphor, semiotic
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 472-83
Michèle Simonsen
Midsummer Celebration in Denmark
Saint John’s Eve, celebrated on 23rd June, is both a private festivity (a party for relatives and friends, often with a bonfire) and a public festivity. It is commonly – and wrongly – assumed by most to be an ancient, unbroken, monolithic tradition. This paper will attempt to deconstruct this delusion. The burning of a “witch” puppet on the bonfire, its most prominent element nowadays, first arose among student circles around 1900. In earlier times, the bonfire itself did not always take place at midsummer, but often on Valpurgis Night (the eve of 1st May). Conversely, the main element of the Saint John’s Eve celebration in former times has now totally disappeared: the nightly visit to some sacred springs with healing waters.
Keywords: Denmark, St John’s Eve, midsummer, bonfire, sacred springs, tradition, change
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 484-98
David Stanley
The Ritual Year and the Cycle of Work in the Life of the American Cowboy
The rhythms of the work year of the American cowboy are dictated less by economics than by natural phenomena: the breeding cycles of cattle and horses, the four seasons, spring and summer rains, the harvesting of hay. The yearly cycle rotates through the birth of calves, spring roundup (gathering, weaning, branding, castrating, dehorning, and inoculating), breeding and testing cows, starting colts and training horses, moving cattle from spring to summer to autumn grazing, fall roundup, shipping cattle to market, and winter feeding – and then the cycle begins again. Parallels between work events and celebrations are explored, along with the dynamic tension between the individual and communitas, the animal and human, ranch and town, and movement and stasis within the landscape.
Keywords: America, USA, cowboy, cattle, horses, work cycle, celebrations, community
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 499-508
Kincsö Verebélyi
Systems of Approaches to Hungarian Calendar Customs
In spite of the generally accepted four-season calendar, the agricultural rites in Europe also show a two- or a three-season system. Agricultural feasts celebrate sowing, harvest and winter rest, without much activity on the field. The historical reforms in European time-reckoning made a further re-distribution of holidays (e.g., the two ecclesiastic calendars in the Church in the East and West). In general the heortology of Hungarian calendar customs belong to the common European tradition, their social framework is similar too – but their time budget shows a certain elasticity. Their structure is a European one, their meaning is regional, and their variations reflect the local circumstances. According to that trichotomy, there are three major schools in studying Hungarian calendar customs.
Keywords: Hungary, agricultural feasts, time-reckoning, European, regional, local
The Ritual Year 1 (2006), 509-16
