I have been taking this anthropology class which is mediocre. It’s a first year course so it is kind of slow and there is a lot of hand-holding designed to help new students adapt to university. For all that occasionally we talk about interesting topics.
Today’s topic was Food and the rituals associated with food. Not surprisingly this got me thinking about food rituals in my own family. The examples brought up in class were holidays like Yom Kippur and Eid and Thanksgiving and the importance of food as a symbol in all of these.
The rituals associated with the food was also and important consideration. At Thanksgiving every year my family goes around the table and each person chooses something that they are thankful for. This is common, many of the other students in my class reported similar traditions – some included prayer but many included a structured way of giving thanks.
On a broad cultural scale this is designed to reinforce cultural values of the importance of gratitude and an awareness of what we have. Then, on a small scale it also reinforces individual family values. For example, when I was young and we were doing the circle of thanks my dad got up and said something along the lines of “I am thankful for nothing you ingrates.”
There are some families where such a thing would be completely unacceptable but in my family everyone erupted into laughter and they still make jokes about it years later. Reinforcing the idea that humour is important and acceptable and not to take things too seriously.
Another family ritual is tea. This one comes down on both sides of my family. When someone comes home and at the end of the night we make a pot of tea and drink it. We spend about ten minutes together – usually sitting in the living room drinking tea. Sometimes it is done just while we are doing other things such as reading or doing homework or other times we spend the time talking.
I remember being young when my grandparents used to take me and some of the cousins to the amusement park on Center Island and afterwards we would have tea with honey and chocolate biscuits on their back porch before going to bed.
It is interesting how something so trivial as a pot of tea is so important to our family environment. It marks our bonding time. When someone makes a pot of tea you take a break from whatever else you are doing and you drink together before going back to work. It goes back probably for generation. When my dad was young his family lived around the corner from the school and the neighbourhood kids used to stop off at the Ashberry house because his mom always had a pot of tea out after school let out.
What are your family rituals?
