Christmas Tradition

Jake TurnerFollow

Date Collected

Winter 11-28-2018

Place item was collected

Logan, Utah

Informant

Mirelle DeSpain

Point of Discovery/Informant Bio

My informant is Mirelle DeSpain. We met, originally, in September 2017, and we have been friends since. She is studying electrical engineering with a minor in computer science at Utah State University, she is a sophomore in terms of years being at Utah State. Her family is from Meridian, Idaho.

Context

This is a tradition in Mirelle’s family that, as far as she is aware, is just her family. It tells of her parents wanting to start their kids Christmas day off with a bit of health before they were loaded with candy and sugar. I got this in a telephone interview with Mirelle, as we didn’t have time to meet in person. The story is short, simple, and to the point. I would consider Mirelle a passive-bearer when it comes to transmitting folklore. Parfaits are not unknown to me, and I think this a rather cute tradition to eat a tad healthy, before letting the chaos of sugar take over. I very well may continue this tradition by myself, until I acquire a family of my own to pass it on to. I would probably retell this custom outside of a personal, familial, setting.

Text

Every Christmas for breakfast we have yogurt parfaits. Our parents would say, “You’re going to have enough candy later on, so we want to start you off with a nice, healthy breakfast of granola, fruit, and yogurt.” (I guess I’m not that interesting, but that’s the story.)

Texture

She told the story very calmly; however it’s hard to interpret much about emotion from pitch alone. She seemed a little more excited about this story than the other one I collected from her about her family’s traditions, and seems to have a positive attachment to this story, whereas she had a form of detachment, or maybe disinterest, from the other piece, as she had mentioned it to me before, but I asked her to repeat it when I had my recorder to be able to do a proper write up. Mirelle didn’t think she had any folklore to tell originally; however, she brought it up when I mentioned having discussed family customs in my folklore class.

Course

Introduction to folklore

Instructor

Prof. Lynne McNeill

Semester and year

Fall 2018

Theme

G1: Holidays

EAD Number

1.13.1.9.17

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Additional Files

Christmas Tradition.docx (7 kB)

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