Folk Groups

I never really considered myself to be part of a folk group, most likely because I thought of folk groups as revivalists and I am far from that.

I consider myself to be a part of religious and nationality folk groups. Growing up, my family did not attend church often because my father was very Catholic and my mother was a Christian. It was not until I was in the seventh grade that my family began to attend a local church in our area. Ever since then, I have found myself associating with the members of that church. We have specific traditions and activities that the church participates in and hosts. For example, most of the church is made up of Norwegian members, so much of what our church does can be rooted in Norwegian traditions.

I also consider myself to be a part of Italian folk groups. I am practically one hundred percent Italian, and I have been raised as such. Any holiday or celebration is always done with tons of delicious food and everyone of my extended family members in attendance. The biggest holiday for our family is probably Christmas Eve. My grandmother cooks the traditional seven fish dinner, which is usually made up of lobster, shrimp (cooked three different ways), calamari, scallops, mussels, bakala, and clams. We all arrive, place our gifts around the tree, and spend time with each other until dinner is ready. Then we each take our places at either the adult table or the kids table, which is inappropriately named in my opinion. The family rule is that you are only allowed to sit at the adult table if there is room, meaning that someone is either not there for the holiday or has passed on. If that is the case, the oldest cousin gets the seat with the adults. It has always been this way and luckily only two seats have opened up in the twenty years that I have been alive. No one in my family considers themselves to be anything but Italian, and I heartily agree with that.

I know that there are other folk groups out there that I belong to, but none of them mean as much to me as the two that I have mentioned. I identify most with them.