SLFK 214, March 2, 2004
Last lecture - playing with structure and anti-structure
Start with the pleasant things of ritual
Turner's communitas
Show danger of ritual and communitas
Necessary limitations on communitas
In all rituals, interesting and necessary mix of structure and anti-structure
Ritual itself, by definition, is structured and patterned activity
In a real ritual, you have certain steps that occur in a certain order
Something that they would know - Holiday Season at Christmas, New Years, etc.
Buying gifts
Sending cards
Office parties
Gifts to service people
Christmas day itself - or whatever day is celebrated
New Years - party on the eve, drinking, staying up late resolutions
Ritual is circumscribed in time and space
You only do it for a while
First Night VA takes place downtown only and only on one night
Mardi Gras tends to be the Latin areas of the US (southern-most states)
And of course it is limited in time, though now it is not just Tues.
Within those limits of time, space, structure
You are allowed reversals, and not just of status but of behavior
Exposing self at Mardi Gras
Staying up late
Excessive food and drink
Danger of ritual - literally: traffic and other accidents
Excellent opportunities for terrorist activities
People's guard is down and lots of people in one place
Attempts to limit ritual - for reasons of safety - counteract the danger
For reasons of objections to the various excesses of behavior that ritual permits
Halloween banned in the schools for excesses, not safety
Though Easters, at least ostensibly, banned for safety reasons
Soviet attempts to do away with ritual
If you have permanent communitas, then the temporary communitas of ritual ceases to be a necessity
Also, attempts to control the excesses that are associated with ritual times
Ritual comes back in the states of the former USSR with remarkable success and looks at lot like pre-Soviet ritual
You can argue that it is a necessity and you cannot get rid of it
Even a totalitarian regime can't do it over a period of 70 years.
US attempts a ritual control
Outside of the safety motive, not so much control as avoidance of offence
No religious material, at least not publicly sanctioned - and a great deal of yearly cycle stuff does have a religious element
You can also argue that the US has what the Soviet Union was ostensibly striving for, as in a society with few social strata to be reversed
Few restrictions on behavior that need to be lifted at times of ritual
As a result, most American rituals are rather bland
Difficult choice - do you want to have the fun that you can in the states of the former USSR and let go to the extent that they do during ritual times?
Will you put up with the restrictions?
The egalitarian approach to ritual in the US expressed in the rituals themselves
The kind-of blend
Items from one ritual transposed to others
Christmas tree > Easter tree
Christmas lights > Halloween lights
People still insist on marking, if not on ritual
The various public decorations and displays
The new trend of flags to mark the seasons
People retain a need for the oscillation between everyday behavior and the special behavior of ritual
Sports is the new ritual?
No religious element
But release as pointed out last time
Also danger - as in traffic accidents and crowding accidents last time
SuperBowl Sunday - this IS a big deal
Please note excessive behavior, some of which proved too excessive
Janet Jackson
Dundes on football as a fall ritual
Sports sure do mark the seasons
Attempts at sports in wrong seasons for revenue purposes - XFL
Pro-wrestling = sports entertainment
Definitely certain stereotypes = status types?
Conflict between same > status reversal?
On to real rituals, start with Christmas, then back to Bogatyrev
About to present the facts of the way Russians and Ukrainians arrange time
This is not personal time - the cycle of a human life
This is collective time - the cycle that goes beyond people and their lives
The way East Slavs perceive nature
In both cases (space and time), we are looking at Slavic ways of viewing nature
Of course humans interact with nature
In fact, what we learned from the space unit is that there is a great deal of closeness between man and his environment
You can (and should) interact with it
But focus in both cases is not on human self but on the grander and greater other that is nature, that surrounds and sustains man
In case of space, this nature is not an "it" to be studied, but and "thou" to interact with
Time also seen as something in which human beings must actively partake
Old ideas about man influencing the course of nature, whether sun or rain
Although some motivated acts say that this (bird cookies) is to make spring come Now - not so much influence as partake in, follow along
Special points in space where there is access to the world of the spirits
The portals in space boundaries
Similarly, special points in time where you can go beyond and touch other realms
Solstices and equinoxes
Interaction has a great deal to do with food
Whether between humans in space
Where they put stranger in icon corner and feed to prove that he is okay
Or time - where great deal of concern with the cycle of the seasons is the cycle of crop production
And a great deal of what happens is articulated in terms of food
Douglas' body human/body politic idea
Russian Christmas is a big holiday of the dead
Big window between this world and the next and you can do all sorts of magic
Belief that soul of person who dies at this time goes straight to Heaven, no mytarstva
Same with the time around Easter
LOTS of magic goes with Christmas
Starts about half way through December with Andrievskii vechir
Fortune-telling and platter songs
Minyonok video
Christmas and life cycle continued - these holidays as a kind of male debutante event
Right now I want the official, primarily Christian holiday
Fast, like before Easter, though not as strict
Christmas Eve is usually a complete fast for adults - as in they eat nothing
Looking for evening star
First start seen - analogy to star of Bethlehem
Role of youngest child
Borders of life and liminality
In American material, children are the ones who get to go trick or treat, again, because they are closest to the spirits
Caroling is a trick-or-treat of sorts
Before I do this, the Christmas Eve meal
Lenten - no meat, but still a rather sumptuous meal
12 dishes to affect each of the 12 months of the year
Role of ancestors
Place set at table
Straw
Offerings of food, or steam
Special foods must include kutia and uzvar
This connected to both beginning and end = seed and fruit
And human life
Kutia is the obligatory food of funerals
Other special food is poppy seed milk and korzh
Poppy seed is union of the animal and the vegetable, like marshmallow
Easter bunny and other "effigies" made of vegetable products
Summoning of ancestors
Heating the bathhouse because death seen as cold and they need to warm up (gret' roditelei)
Window of the Christmas period
Ancestors come and join you
Prohibitions on use of sharp objects
Fortune telling
If you die during this period (as during the period between Easter and Provody) a window is open to the other world and you go straight to Heaven, you do not have to go through the mytarstva or Purgatory
Russian and other Slavic older caroling group is kind of a male debutant parade
The men march now the street and show themselves off to potential mates
Russian Christmas - debutant aspect
Presentation not of women but of men
They are expected to get married within the next calendar year
They are presented in a secret way
Show of mock "attributes"
Concealment of faces
Not really a chose your mate event
Probably primarily aimed at fertility, whether human or animal/plant/crop
US examples of life cycle tied to seasons
When to weddings typically occur?
What are big engagement times?
Initiation, as in college and other graduations always occurs at a certain time
Often coinciding with …
As for birth and death - hard to time those, though there are certain seasons when birth and death rates are higher.
Is there a debutant season?
What is a debutant event? Who does them now and why?
Blessing of cattle - give them something like special cookies to eat
Please note the food aspect of the holiday
Foregoing food to prepare
Then exchange
With family, ancestors included
Family extends BEYOND those physically present
With the farm animals
With carolers who come to the home
Other visitors also
Gift to midwife
Gifts to beggars
Come to American food exchange
Christmas parties
Gifts to service people