holidays

Lesson 18SOC 86 – Popular CultureRobert Wonser

1

Holidays and Rituals

Holidays and rituals both generally serve the same basic role as holidays in society

Holidays are defined as days on which custom or the law dictates a suspension of general business activity in order to commemorate or celebrate a particular event • The rituals associated with holidays reaffirm communal

bonds (while undermining others);• Concerned with the normative dimensions of society

(because they all reinforce some values);• Dramatic (they employ narratives, displays, or 3d

theater-like performance)

2

Durkheim Functional Approach on HolidaysA) profane (secular), routine daily life—

instrumental activities (work and chores)—tend to weaken the shared beliefs and social bonds and enhance centrifugal individualism

B) rituals provide a major mechanism for the re-creation of a society in which members worship the same objects and share experiences that help form and sustain deep emotional bonds among the members

C) the specific elements of rituals, as well as the objects worshiped or celebrated have no intrinsic value or meaning

3

More Durkheim

Weekdays are dedicated to work and commerce, people tend to abandon their commitment to shared values and communities during holidays these shared values and commitments are reaffirmed

When holidays deteriorate, so do moral and social order

Rituals/holidays correlate negatively with social disintegration (excessive individualism)

For Durkheim, holidays are socializing events; they reinforce shared beliefs that foster social integration

4

Expanding on Durkheim

Different holidays play different societal roles

Not all holidays are integrate (that is bring people together)

Two types of holidays:• Recommitment holidays are those that use narratives, drama, and ceremonies to directly enforce commitments to shared beliefs

• Tension management holidays fulfill this role indirectly by releasing tensions that result from the close adherence to beliefs

5

Recommitment Holidays

Most familiar

What Durkheim had in mind

•Ex: Easter, resurrection of Christ, joy and fulfillment of redemption and the rebirth and reaffirmation of faith

•Ex: Passover, focus on a narrative openly dedicated to socialization (esp of children)

• Etzioni, 2004

6

Tension Management Holidays

Expected to serve social integration indirectly and therefore pose a higher risk of malfunction

•Ex: New year’s Eve, Mardi GrasDuring these holidays, mores that are

upheld the rest of the year are suspended to allow for indulgence, and some forms of behavior usually considered asocial, and hence disintegrative, are temporarily accepted

7

Since there is residual alienation to all commitments the tension must be released through these tension management holidays to enhance socialization and resocialization

Tension managements holidays that set clear time limits are expected to be more integrative than those who do not

Ex: Bachelor and bachelorette parties are temporally bound by the wedding date itself (yet may be the cause of tension rather than its relief)

8

Decline of Tension Management HolidaysUsed to be more prevalent in the 18th and 19th centuries

(many holidays today were this way, Christmas included)

The decline of rowdy celebrations is the result of a decreasing willingness of the middle class to tolerate“routine rowdiness as a form of cathartic release among the lower orders, especially lower-class men”

Victorian influence: holidays were becoming “domestic occasions”

↓ of carnivalesque celebrations came the ↑ of home and family centered celebrations such as Thanksgiving

From “Carnivalesque” to “child-centered”Contemporary American

holidays focus on the innocence of the “wondrous child” which was unrecognizable from the rowdy celebrations of the nation’s past

Compared to the 1850s one finds that tension management holidays have declined and reinforcement style have increased

Child CenteredHoliday’s rituals were invented by adults to evoke in

their offspring the wonder of childhood innocence, very often expressed through gift giving

Traditional gift giving established and maintained bonds between unequals.

Giving to inferiors displayed power, reinforced dependency but also harmony

The thread running through this Victorian nationalization of holidays and the present commercialized holiday is the celebration of the “wondrous child” in the modern holiday.

Early gifts included candy, fruits, nuts and fancy bibles.

11

The Privatization of HolidaysChild centered focus led to the

privatization of holidays.

Celebrated in one’s home with one’s family centered around children, not the community.

The increased nature of the holidays becoming privatized may likely have the effect of declining integration in society

Individualism rose between 1960 and 1990 in American society, the same years holidays have become less public.

12

The Significance of the Holiday Cycle

What is the social significance of the particular sequence in which holidays are arranged? That is, why were some ritualized and not others?

Recommitment and tension management holidays tend to alternate

Holidays focused on children, like Christmas are preceded and followed by festivities built around aggressive, sexual, adult themes (e.g. Christmas is preceded by office parties and followed by New Year’s Eve)

13

Gender and HolidaysHolidays tend to lag rather than lead societal change,

and the more they lag the more hinder rather than advance societal integration.

The greater the sectorial lag, the more tension one would expect between the groups involved

Women’s roles in holidays seem to have been akin to their roles in other parts of the socialization and moral reinforcement institutional infrastructure

Women have been charged with prepping the celebratory meals, shopping for gifts, promoting the holiday spirit and so on

Holidays sanctified the middle class woman as the queen of the home and underscored the importance of displaying status and wealth in making the occasion memorable.

14

Changing Women’s Roles?Since the 1960s women’s roles have

begun to be recast however they still lag behind other changes in society.

Regression toward traditional mores during holidays

Even in households where women work outside the home and husbands assume some household and childcare responsibilities, women still do a disproportionate share of the inviting, planning and preparing, cooking and serving of holiday meals; above all women are expected to ensure the warm glow of the holiday spirit

15

Halloween’s OriginsCeltic New Year’s Celebration originally called Samhain

(‘Summer’s End’)

October 31: when Druids warded off the hostile ghosts of the recently dead by opening their doors, offering bonfires and gifts of food to these returning dead

Later dressed as ghosts themselves to shield themselves from the ghosts’ mischief

The Celtic lunar calendar consisted of 13 months of 28 days each - plus one extra day to make 365 days.

This extra day is October 31st, the day between the old year and the new year, a sort of ‘time between times’ when the curtain between the physical and supernatural worlds was drawn aside, allowing dead ancestors and supernatural beings (the so-called ‘faery folk,’ so beloved to the traditions of Celtic countries) to cross over and visit the world of mortals.

16

Halloween in the U.S.1930s and 1940s when Halloween becomes

infantilized

Rowdy Halloween behavior became unacceptable to elites

So it was passed down to children in “cute” ways, like trick-or-treating

In the 40s and 50s Halloween costumes were of spiritual or social outcasts (ghosts, witches, hobos and pirates) reminding householders of traditional fears of the unknown and recent social upheavals of the Depression. This soon gave way to Disney and other popular culture costumes

17

Halloween in the U.S.Parents often feel safer taking their children to the mall

for trick-or-treating than letting them visit their neighbors… decline of community trust

What about razor blades in candy apples?

Example of moral panic (and used as a case-in-point about how morally lax our society has become) and urban legend

Most reports of tampering alleged tampering with no follow up reports or arrests or physical harm to anyone.

Discovery of adulterated treats = praise and recognition (for kids and adults alike)

When there is rarely trouble it isn’t an anonymous sadist but a loved one

18

ThanksgivingOpposed by theologians was spread not by popular

practice but by the decisions of public leaders

Originally a Yankee holiday celebrated only in the North

Became a national holiday after the Civil War

Used to be celebrated at different days nationwide depending on the governor at the time

Created by educated professionals and ‘Americanizers’ who recognized the conflicting allegiances of the masses and the need to make them into loyal citizens

1939: Used to be last week in November until President Roosevelt pushed it to the second to last week in November to allow for more shopping time before Christmas (in hopes of pulling the U.S. out of the Depression). 19

Thanksgiving traditions1. THE GIVING OF THE JOB ADVICE

Teenagers are given a ritual status shift to the adult part of the family, not only through the move from the kids' table to the grownup table, but also through the career counseling spontaneously offered by aunts, uncles, and anyone else with wisdom to share.

2. THE FORGETTING OF THE INGREDIENT

Oh no! I forgot to put the evaporated milk in the pumpkin pie! As the authors of the Thanksgiving study state, "since there is no written liturgy to insure exact replication each year, sometimes things are forgotten." In the ritual pattern, the forgetting is followed by lamentation, reassurance, acceptance, and the restoration of comfortable stability. It reinforces the themes of abundance (we've got plenty even if not everything works out) and family togetherness (we can overcome obstacles).

20

3. THE TELLING OF DISASTER STORIES OF THANKSGIVINGS PAST

Remember that time we fried a turkey and burned the house down? Another way to reinforce the theme of family togetherness is to retell the stories of things that have gone wrong at Thanksgiving and then laugh about them. This ritual can turn ugly, however, if not everyone has gotten to the point where they find the disaster stories funny.

4. THE REAPPROPRIATION OF THE STORE-BOUGHT ITEMS

Transfer a store-bought pie crust to a bigger pan, filling out the extra space with pieces of another store-bought pie crust, and it's not quite so pre-manufactured anymore. Put pineapple chunks in the Jello, and it becomes something done "our way." The theme of the importance of the "homemade" emerges in the ritual of slightly changing the convenience foods to make them less convenient.

21

5. THE PET'S MEAL

The pet is fed special food while everyone looks on and takes photos. This ritual enacts the theme of inclusion also involved in the inviting of those with "nowhere else to go.”

22

6. THE PUTTING AWAY OF THE LEFTOVERS

In some cultures, feasts are followed by a ritual destruction of the surplus. At Thanksgiving the Puritan value of frugality is embodied in the wrapping and packing up of all the leftovers. Even in households in which cooking from scratch is rare, the turkey carcass may be saved for soup. No such concern for waste is exhibited toward the packaging, which does not come from "a labor of love" and is simply thrown away.

7. THE WALKING

After the eating and the groaning and the belly patting, someone will suggest a walk and a group will form to take a stroll. Sometimes the walkers will simply do laps around the house, but they often head out into the world to get some air. There is usually no destination involved, just a desire to move and feel the satisfied quietness of abundance — and to make some room for dessert.

23

Christmas

Divided early Americans between celebrants of the traditional pattern and Puritan opponents of those rituals

Puritans banned it in New England.

In the South and middle regions where Puritans didn’t dominate it was a post-harvest season of drinking, eating and frolicking lasting from mid-December to the first Monday after New Year’s Day.

24

Christmas‘ Festivities

Mumming, or wassailing where groups of youths begged from door to door for food and drink and sang and toasted their benefactors

Some intruded into homes wearing masks, shouts and swords.

Slaves were allowed to mum in North Carolina and elsewhere

Powerful and wealthy were expected (often extorted) to share their bounty

Recognized the importance of these “safety valves”

Christmas was a masculine outdoor holiday rather than a feminine domestic one

25

Christmas‘ Origins in the US

26

•Nativity story wasn’t taught in New England until the 1850s

•It was only between 1837 and 1890 that individual states recognized Christmas as a legal holiday in the U.S.

•Christmas revelries became more confrontational and disruptive when youth and the poor became further alienated and alien to the rich in the large towns

•Elites called for a new holiday to unify the nation

•They decided to build a sentimental holiday around the celebration of family rather than community, shifting the “patron-client exchange” to a parent-child bond

ChristmasSpread by popular middle class magazines,German Christmas trees in the 1830s, English

Christmas cards in the 1840s, Dutch cookies and new carols published in the 1870s and the exchange of gifts between family members

No longer were children seen as servants upon who Christmas boxes were obligingly bestowed but as unique individuals whose parents happily showered with gifts

The offspring represented the family and helped confirm it as a harmonious unit set apart from the public world of class differences

27

Santa Claus, Commercialism Incarnate!

Used to shield the gifting process from “materialism” and commercialism

Disguised the indulgence of parents from children (and to some extent, parents themselves) as well as the commercial origins of store-bought gifts

Modern Christmas and commercialization appeared simultaneously. Never was there a pure Christmas of charity and simple family traditions

Spending has always been a part of the modern sentimental holiday and yesterday’s tawdry commercialization of Christmas becomes today’s venerated traditions

• Ex: dept store windows, Coca-Cola Santa, ornate Christmas cards, Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas”

28

Our Newest Holiday: Black Friday$12.3 billion was the

overall brick-and-mortar store sales for Thanksgiving and Black Friday 2013 - up 2.3% from 2012

$1.964 billion was the overall online sales for Thanksgiving and Black Friday - up over 18.5% from 2012

Why do we participate in this madness?

29

The average 2013 Black Friday online order was $135.27 - that’s up 2.2% year-over-year

Black Friday online mentions peaked at 11am CST

Walmart dominated in Black Friday mentions, with 77.5% of the voice

Mobile sales: reached 21.8% of total online sales - that’s an increase of nearly 43% from last year

24.9% of all online traffic on Black Friday came from smartphones - that compares to tablets at 14.2%

How do you pay? PayPal reported a 121% increase in global mobile payments compared to Black Friday 2012

30

New ‘holydays’

Buy Nothing Day (BND) is an international day of protest against consumerism. In North America, Buy Nothing Day is held on the Friday after U.S. Thanksgiving. Buy Nothing Day was founded in Vancouver by artist Ted Dave[3] and subsequently promoted by Adbusters magazine, based in Canada.

The first Buy Nothing Day was organized in Canada in September 1992 "as a day for society to examine the issue of over-consumption." In 1997, it was moved to the Friday after American Thanksgiving, also called "Black Friday", which is one of the ten busiest shopping days in the United States.

31

Commercialization of Holidays

Nothing new.

We’re a capitalist society, it follows our holidays (“holy days”) would reflect that through commercialization

Though communal rituals, mass produced objects acquire social and personal meanings

34

Holidays Today

Child-focused holiday served social and cultural needs:

•Create a counter to the class-based exchanges and conflicts of traditional celebrations

•Helps with modern nostalgia and the release of tensions, no longer through “excess” but of childhood “innocence”

•Child focused holiday also meshes with consumerism

35

Holidays todayAccording to historian John Gillis,

American holidays, rituals and myths are lagging behind reality—that is, they represent a distorted view of a society that is long gone, especially the notion that there was and ought to be one “traditional” kind of family.

Holidays can be edited (even new ones manufactured as in the case of Kwanza reflecting the rise of multiculturalism and the Black middle class) as long as they either reflect changes in values and power relations within a society or advance thee changes without moving too far from evolving trends

36