Arakin 4 kurs new 001 176. indd

custom
is a traditional 
practice
, a mode of individual behaviour 
or a habit of social life — that is transmitted by word of mouth or 
imitation, then ingrained by social pressure, common usage and pa-
rental authority. When customs are associated with holidays they 
become 
calendar customs
, and when such events are celebrated an-
nually by a whole community they become festivals.
In a sense transmitting folklore is itself a custom. Story-telling, 
ballad-singing, riddle-posing, game and prank playing and the like 
are all customary acts, for their survival depends on tradition rather 
than on official control.
Most true folk customs in the US are associated with special events, 
especially those that require rites of passage — birth, marriage, and 
death. They begin at once when a child is born. Boy babies are cus-
tomarily dressed in blue, and girls in pink.
Celebrations of birthday anniversaries may begin as early as the 
first year in some families and they may continue through one’s entire 
life. More commonly, however, birthday parties are dropped at about 
high school age sometimes to be revived once at the symbolic age of 
maturity (21 years) and again as an annual celebration in later middle 
age. Children’s birthdays almost invariably are the occasion for spank-
ing — one spank for each year, with extras “to grow in”, or “for good 
measure”. Children in some regions maintain a fairly rigid schedule 
of extra-punishment days before and after the birthday anniversary — 
“pinch day”, “hit day”, “kiss day” and so forth.
Birthday gift at a party may be held over the head of the celebrating 
child for him to guess the donor or to announce the use to which he 
intends to put that gift. For each correct guess he is granted a wish.
The loss of “baby teeth” is one of the few other non-holiday occa-
sions in a child’s life when customs are followed.
Courtship and engagement begin a new round of customs that lead 
to a grand final at marriage, the most tradition-regulated personal 
ceremony in American life.
Wedding customs begin with the “shower” often several of them, 
to emphasize different kinds of needed gifts.
Customs of the wedding itself are numerous and largely regulated 
by tradition. They include the dress of participants, the seating of 

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guests, the choice of attendants, kissing the bride, throwing rice, 
passing the bride’s shoe around for money, playing pranks on the 
married couple, and decorating the car.
Wedding customs, however rough, are essentially celebration of a 
happy time. But customs associated with death are generally fraught 
with suggestions of fear or superstition.
From youth to old age, at work and at play, in school and in widen-
ing arches of our orbits, from the country with which we identify, we 
encounter folk traditions, customs, recipes, memories, sayings and 
allusions that in sum constitute a yearly folklore brew.
Only by turning to the folklore of peoples, probing into its mean-
ings and functions, and searching for links between different bodies 
of tradition may we hope to understand the intellectual and spiri-
tual life of man in its broadest dimensions.