Kjeisten SecretanFollow

Date Collected

Fall 12-3-2017

Place item was collected

Lehi, Utah at collectors house

Informant

Rachel Ives

Point of Discovery/Informant Bio

Rachel Ives is my girlfriend. We have been dating for 4 months. She grew up in the Air Force, so she has lived in many different places around the world. She belongs the Mormon church and is currently studying psychology at BYU.

Context

I interviewed Rachel in my car outside of my parent’s house. It was a very relaxed atmosphere. She thinks her family still does the pickle tradition, but is unsure because she hasn’t been with her family for Christmas in the last few years. If she is with her family she is definitely going to do it with her family. She may have mentioned this tradition to her friends before. She doesn’t believe a lot of people know about it the United States. She’s not sure where her aunt learned it from. She might do it with her future family.

Text

So, my mom’s older sister Gloria. I think she gave my mom this pickle, but it’s not a real pickle for you Christmas tree, it’s a German tradition I think. The thing is you hide it in the Christmas tree and the person who finds it gets a present or like a prize. But my mom would always hide it or my dad would hide it the night before and it’s the first thing we would do on Christmas morning is we would have a competition to see who would find the pickle and then yeah…but then it got a little bit more violent as we got older so I think we had to stop doing that. And then we broke that pickle and my aunt sent us a new one.

Texture

Rachel told this tradition with lots of energy. She enjoys Christmas so talked about this excitedly. She laughed when she jokingly talked about her family being more violent as they got older, so they had to stop the competition.

Course

Introduction to Folklore/English 2210

Instructor

Lynne S. Mcneill

Semester and year

Fall 2017

Theme

G1: Holidays

EAD Number

1.13.11.4

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