Why does food play such a big part in so many sacred traditions? How do people use food to make sense of the world? Why do we fast, kill animals, feed spirits, and throw
potluck suppers in the name of religion?
Responses are 2-3 paragraph postings to the class website or handed in as a hard copy in
class.
Rubric for Grading
This assignment will not be graded primarily in terms of written presentation. I will
be looking for three things when I assign grades:
1- Following Instructions: Did you complete the assignment according to the
instructions above? (1 point)
2- Clarity: Do you explain yourself in a way that is clear, concise, and wellorganized? Though this is an informal assignment, and you will not be graded on
grammar and written presentation, your writing should be clear enough that
someone who has never taken a course in Religious Studies could read it and
understand it (and perhaps even learn something from it!). (2 points)
3- Careful, Contemplative Reasoning: It should be evident that you have actually
thought carefully about the reading that you are responding to, and that you have
put some time and consideration into your response. In short, this is not meant to be
the sort of assignment that can be completed successfully 10 minutes before class.
(2 points)
“Giving an Altar” The Ideology of Reproduction in a St. Joseph’s Day Feast
Author(s): Kay Turner and Suzanne Seriff
Source: The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 100, No. 398, Folklore and Feminism (Oct. Dec., 1987), pp. 446-460
Published by: American Folklore Society
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KAY TURNER
SUZANNE SERIFF
“Giving an Altar”
The Ideology of Reproductio
Day Feast
The St. Joseph’s altar tradition, dating back to the 16th century in Sicily,
continues to be celebrated in a Sicilian-American community in central Texas.
Dedicated to the patron of the family and the poor, elaborate altars are made by
women and presented in the home. This woman-centered tradition provides a case
in point for understanding folklore practice and performance through a feminist
orientation that emphasizes the ideology of reproduction.
THE ST. JOSEPH’S ALTAR TRADITION-dating back to the 16th century in Sicily-continues to be celebrated in Sicilian-American enclaves in Texas, Louisiana, California, and elsewhere. San Giuseppi, patron of the family, the poor,
the widowed, and orphans, is honored through the creation of elaborate-literally floor to ceiling-altars composed primarily of food and traditionally
dedicated and displayed in the home.1 It is the female head of household who
“gives” the altar, orchestrating and overseeing its display in fulfillment of a
promise made to the Saint in a moment of need. This woman-centered altar
tradition provides a splendid case in point for understanding folklore practice
and performance through a feminist orientation.
What feminist theory brings to the interpretation of women’s lore is a commitment to understanding lore as it arises from and promotes a woman-centered ideology. In fact, much of what we as folklorists call women’s tradition
is based on such an ideology, one that we call an ideology of reproduction. We
use the notion of reproduction not in the strict Marxist sense (that is, as acts
and institutions that maintain and reproduce the social relations of capitalist
production), but in the sense derived from feminist scholars such as Alison
Jaggar (1983), Eleanor Kuykendall (1983), Adrienne Rich (1979), Sara Ruddick (1980), and Caroline Whitbeck (1983). These feminists have effectively
reclaimed reproduction as an ideological sphere separate from production.
They have asserted the potential for reproduction as maternal practice, including pregnancy, birthing, childrearing, and family nurturance. Such practice
codifies a thought and value system that is distinctly different from patriarchal
thought and value. Both productive and reproductive labor produce values
and create new needs. However, as Mary O’Brien has suggested,
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“Giving an Altar”
447
the values and needs created are not . . . commensurable … [The] productive process creates
values and needs for the producer: in any form, reproductive labour creates another and needy
human. Production in its historic development becomes socially necessary labour; reproduction
is primordially necessarily social labour. [1981:16]
This maternally derived ideology of reproduction foregrounds social practices
based on affiliation, concern for others, sharing, caring, gifting, and religious
belief. And to a great extent, as is made evident in the St. Joseph’s altar tradition, the reproductive value system employs a noncoercive form of power,
power “in terms of the social development of human capacities” Jaggar
1983:282) rather than power in terms of conquest and domination.
A new conception of reproduction at the level of ideology is welcome. It
provides a means for examining the sources and subtleties of women’s empowerment, even in the context of historically determined hegemonies. In this
case study of a particular community, for example, the effects of class distinctions between merchants and farmers are in evidence as is the inheritance of
classic Mediterranean patriarchal authority. Conflicts arising from such class
and gender divisions are played out in the festival we have examined. Indeed,
no traditional festival is immune to the determining contingencies of class,
caste, gender, and race. However, it is our contention that an analysis of a
woman-centered festival such as the St. Joseph’s Day celebration cannot end
with these determining forces. We maintain that a full understanding of such
festival behavior must encourage analysis from the point of view of a different
ideology, one that first recognizes and in fact centers on what women themselves value: maternal practice.
We view our research on the St. Joseph’s altar as a case study for illuminating
the basis of feminist folklore interpretation in reproduction theory. Our study
is based upon a four-year period of fieldwork with members of a SicilianAmerican community living in a central Texas town. We have worked with
several families, five of which have given altars that we observed. The first
section of this article constitutes a description of the altar tradition. Subsequently, we will address two well-known themes in anthropological and folklore theory: inversion and gifting. Both of these theories have been generally
approached on the basis of the way they reflect, maintain, confront, or challenge the edicts of dominance, status, and hierarchy. But the end goals of status and hierarchy usually align with those of production whereas we are committed to a rethinking of inversion and gifting as they serve the more fertile
goals of reproduction.
St. Joseph’s Day in Texas
The most salient feature of the St. Joseph’s Feast Day is the symbolically
loaded altar. Sometimes referred to as a “table,” the altar is constructed only
for presentation on or around the feast day, 19 March. This highly elaborated
altar tradition finds its counterpart in the maintenance of home altars made for
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448
Journal of American Folklore
(100, 1987
daily use, a folk practice widespread among Catholic women of Mediterranean descent. The altar marks a site for communication between the heavenly
family and the earthly family. It bridges sacred and secular realms by providing a locus of communication, a place for the performance of belief in the
home.2 While the home altar is usually an unobtrusive, fixed assemblage in the
private quarters of the home, the St. Joseph’s table is grandiose in its multitiered display of icons surrounded by mounds of cakes, fruits, cookies, pies,
and special breads-all aimed at creating a visual metaphor of abundance.
This purposeful exaggeration of abundance is no less than a profound offering of thanks-an offering to the Saint in recognition of his assistance in a
time of family crisis. Typical of the petitions made to San Giuseppi are those
for help in curing illness, rectifying financial setbacks, bringing a loved one
safely back from war, or bringing a healthy child into the world. As one of the
senior members of the community, Rose Restivo, explained, “If someone in
your family is sick, you make it for him-you ask St. Joseph-and it works.
It sure do work.” In essence, St. Joseph stands as that protector of the integrity
of the family who is called upon whenever the close-knit fabric of family relations is in danger of being rent.
In Chase, Texas, the tradition of constructing an altar is at least 70 years
old, involving a community of Sicilian-Americans whose ancestors immigrated to Texas at the turn of the century. When the tradition was at its peak
(in the 1950s) as many as 20 to 30 individual altars were made in private homes.
“They used to have them all the time,” altarmaker Rosalie Gullo offered. “A
long time ago we used to have so many neighbors, they had one in each house.
They get through eating at one house and they go to another.” Today the tradition may be said to be dwindling in terms of the number of altars made, but
the importance placed on the event, which now occurs in three or four homes
per year, has certainly not diminished. If anything, the altars themselves have
become increasingly more elaborate, and the responsibility for maintaining
the tradition within the community assumed by individual altarmakers has become increasingly complex. A single family, for example, can count on hosting the feast for anywhere from 500 to 1000 people. Obviously, the expense
of giving an altar is not to be underestimated. However, the host family rarely
carries the entire financial burden. Gifts of time, money, and food are pledged
by other family and community members, often as promises to the Saint, in
order to insure his blessings. For example, Sally Cantarella’s aunt had cancer.
To stay healthy, she promised to make eight cakes for Sally’s altar. Sally continued, “Different ones will make different donations. I mean, it just all goes
together.”
The desire to give an altar is based upon a private promise made between a
person and San Giuseppi, sometimes years in advance of the actual offering. A
promise can be made by either a male or female petitioner, but it is generally
the woman of the family who fulfills the promise by overseeing the construction of the altar. Once the petition has been answered, the woman begins to
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Turner and Seriff)
“Giving an Altar”
449
make preparations for the giving of her table. Months in advance, women in
the community-kin and friends-are chosen to serve as her primary helpmates, and tasks are assigned. It is at this point, too, that community members
are chosen to participate in the ceremony that accompanies the presentation of
the altar. This ceremony-a ritual reenactment of Joseph and Mary’s search
for lodging in Bethlehem-requires that representatives be selected to play the
roles of the Holy Family and various other saints designated as important by
the giver of the altar. The ceremony culminates in a ritual feasting of these
impersonated saints.
The altar is constructed over a nine-day period before the day the altar will
be publically given. This period constitutes a novena, and each day of preparation is concluded with the saying of the rosary and a special oration to San
Giuseppi. Preparations are centered on the cooking and baking of the huge
quantities of special foods that will either adorn the altar or be served at the
feast itself.
Early in the preparation period the women bake certain of the fancy pastries
and cookies used to decorate the altar. Of utmost importance is the baking of
the traditional cosifigli (Figure 1)-giant fig cookies made in the shape of the
saints’ identifying symbols: the lily-crowned cane of St. Joseph, the Sacred
Heart ofJesus, the rosary of Mary, and the book of St. Ann are a few examples. These will be seen in conjunction with special wreath-shaped breads, the
cucchidagli, one for each saint on the altar. In the days that follow, more per-
Figure 1. Making cosifigli, the traditional fig-filled pastries created in the
shapes of the saints’ identifying symbols. [Photo: Kay Turner]
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450
Journal of American Folklore
(100, 1987
ishable sweets such as pies, cakes, and Italian pastries including canolis and
cream puffs are made, as are dozens of different kinds of cookies. By this time
the women are spending ten to twelve hours each day in the altarmaker’s
home, where extra stoves, refrigerators, and utensils have been moved in to
accommodate the massive culinary activity. While pastries are baked in one
corner of the kitchen, vegetables are chopped and fried or decorative fruits are
prepared in another.
In the largest room of the house, usually the living room, the altargiver and
her closest friends and kin begin to arrange the altar, designing it according to
the altargiver’s understanding of the proper aesthetic. General knowledge of
this aesthetic (e.g., the importance of symmetry and balance) is shared by all
the women in the community, but the final details of any particular altar’s appearance are negotiated among the altargiver and her closest associates (Figure
2).
The day before St. Joseph’s, the men are given the task of cooking the spaghetti and gravy, a labor-intensive job that usually is done in the garage or in
a tent erected specifically for that purpose. Because St. Joseph’s Day falls during Lent, meat is not allowed; in its stead, hard boiled eggs are served with the
sauce. The eggs are boiled and peeled in the large pots the night before the
feast. In order to accommodate the expected crowds with at least one egg per
helping, as many as 100 dozen eggs may be boiled. Men take shifts throughout
the night to stir and season the huge 20-gallon vats of sauce. The altargiver and
Figure 2. Friends of the altargiver work out the decorative details in the
creation of a St. Joseph’s Day altar. [Photo: Kay Turner]
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Turner and Seriff)
“Giving an Altar”
451
her female companions maintain control over this process, coming out to the
tents every few hours to check on the seasoning, temperature, and thickness
of the sauce. According to Sally Cantarella, “The men are just the ones who
can handle [the pots]. . . . The ladies supervise.”
Once the altar has been completely set-some time on the day or evening
before the feast-the parish priest comes to the house to bless the altar and the
family sponsoring it. The actual day of presentation of the altar finds hundreds
of people, most from the immediate area, participating in the feast. The celebration begins with the ritual reenactment of Joseph and Mary’s search for
lodging in Bethlehem: the party of chosen “saints,” led by Joseph and Mary,
must knock on three different doors of the house before they will be allowed
to enter by the host family. In days past, the saints were dressed in homemade
biblical costumes. Now the one remaining costume feature is the handmade
lily-wreathed staff carried by St. Joseph at the head of the procession. Once
inside, the saints are seated at an elegantly set table at the foot of the altar. Then
commences the ceremonial feting of the saints; it is the act of feeding and nour-
ishing them that serves as the central ritual act. In this instance, it is the men’s
role to feed the saints. The saints are encouraged to eat up to and beyond their
capacity. It is not unusual to see the male servers cutting up portions of food,
wiping dirty mouths, and even spoonfeeding the honored guests, especially
those played by young children. The men cry out, “Eat! Eat! Have just a little
bit more.” According to custom, the saints must eat some of every kind of
food. The greatest emphasis is placed upon insuring that the saints are honored
through a limitless sense of culinary indulgence.
Although the men serve, it is the women who present the food as gifts to
the saints. They line up to serve plate after plate-as many as 15 or 20 separate
rounds-of various customary foods. Food is presented to the saints in a ritual
progression, each woman serving three plates in accord with the custom that
allows a wish to be made after delivering the first of three rounds. The feast
always begins with sour foods (grapefruit baskets or other citrus fruits fancifully displayed), proceeds through several courses of other fruits and traditionally prepared vegetables, then lavishes the meatless pasta. The meal culminates at the moment when the saints ask for their favorite sweets directly
from the altar. Having been grandly feted by the community, the saints are
escorted from the table and positioned in a line to receive homage from those
in attendance. Typically, people kneel to kiss the right hands and feet of the
saints as a way of receiving their blessing.
This ends the ritual procedures of the day. At this point, friends, relatives,
and community members go outside and queue up to feast on what the saints
have “left behind.” Everyone is served heaping portions of spaghetti and egg.
The eating takes place beneath a huge tent. Once the spaghetti has been consumed, women attending the altar begin dispensing its contents, bringing to
the tent trays loaded with the various sweets that only recently had decorated
the sacred site. The object is to clear the altar completely by the end of the day.
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Journal of American Folklore
(100, 1987
In accord with the initial purpose of the feast day-that is, to feed the poorany food that is not consumed is given to charity. Sally Cantarella explained
how, at the conclusion of her St. Joseph’s dedication, she and her husband
would “box it [the leftover food] up and take it to the nursing home or the
orphanage.” They always did this, she said, “because it’s all blessed and it’s
not to be thrown away. It’s taken to the needy.” Rosalie Gullo added,
“. . . this (custom) was from the old country, that’s where it all started
from. … Then they used to give it to the poor, to the real poor people.”
Before the representative saints leave at the end of the day they are each
given one of the fancy breads and a fig cookie made in the shape of their saint’s
attribute (e.g., cane, heart, and so on). These breads and cookies are often
saved for a period of years within the saints’ families and are brought out for
special display during other holiday occasions.
Exaggeration and Inversion
From the folklorist’s point of view, what the observer sees are the effects of
two relatively common festival-related strategies: exaggeration and inversion.
As a religious feast, St. Joseph’s Day is structured through these instruments
of exaggeration and symbolic reversal. In order for the important symbolic
content of the ritual to be revealed-that is, the gift and the necessity of gifting-the form must free up the potential for receiving that content.
On St. Joseph’s Day, food is the key symbol for exaggerating woman’s role
as nurturer and caretaker of the family. This elaborate feast prepared for the
Holy Family can be seen as the hyperbolic counterpart of the daily meals provided for the sustenance of the altargiver’s secular family. On this special day,
food is exalted from its secular place in the kitchen to a sacred place on the
altar. The altar is loaded with food-especially fancy sweets that require traditional expertise in their baking. Icons of the saints, who have their proper
and immortal place on an altar, are visually obscured by this invasion of the
ephemeral. Food is raised high and grandly displayed via the multi-tiered, vertical thrust of the altar’s construction. In fact, the highest altar is considered
best: the taller it gets, the more food it can handle.
Food on the altar symbolically represents abundance. The aesthetics of the
altar are governed by an intention to exaggerate and proclaim the altarmaker’s
willingness to give, to make a sacrifice, not of blood, but of food, the symbol
of sustenance and growth. To feed the displaced Holy Family and associated
saints, and to do so in such an extravagant manner, underscores the primacy
of reproductive values in this community: love is shown through an unmitigated act of actual and symbolic nurturance.
The St. Joseph’s altar also affords moments of symbolic reversal which,
along with these exaggerations, provide a window on the community’s dependence upon the values of reproduction. As Barbara Babcock has suggested
in the introduction to her important collection, The Reversible World, “It is
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Turner and Seriff)
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453
through various forms of inversion that culture frees itself from the limitation
of thou-shalt-nots; enriches itself with the subject matter of that without
which it would not work efficiently, and enables itself to speak about itself’
(1978:20-21). Specifically in terms of applying a feminist theory to the symbolic reversals of this Sicilian-American tradition, we want to emphasize the
way in which this altar practice “enriches (this culture) with the subject matter
without which it would not work efficiently” or at all, namely the subject mater of woman: the mother, the nurturer, the feeder, the provider. The performance of inversive rites wherein women “take charge” is a particularly effective means of asserting the reproductive basis of women’s power.3 Furthermore, the inversions in the St. Joseph’s tradition are accompanied by symbolic
and behavioral exaggerations that overtly acclaim the value and values of reproduction.
Reproduction and its inherent values constitute the core of behaviors, sentiments, and motivations among the women of this small Texas community.
Even though many of these women work outside the home, daily and primary
attention is given to child care, cooking, care of the sick, emotional support
of the family, and the acts of community support that assure the growth and
well-being of blood relations as well as an extended, extra-household network
of relations. But what is equally important is the reflexive nature of these be-
haviors. These women are engaged in constant communication about and
evaluation of the practice of caring for and nurturing others.
If the ideology of reproduction can be said to be embedded in the very heart
of women’s everyday life, the St. Joseph’s Day celebration and its attendant
symbolic inversions and exaggerations become instrumental in annually foregrounding the importance of this ideology. Annually occurring during Lent,
the feast momentarily overrrides this season associated with fasting and personal denial. Food display and consumption become the order of the day. On
a day dedicated to the male patron of the family, the spiritual head of the
household, it is women who take charge and women’s reproductive labor that
is ultimately celebrated. As the nine-day preparation period wears on, women
increasingly take over the altargiver’s house. Men occupy space on the periphery of the altarmaking scene. They willingly defer to the women’s authority.
In a reversal of standard role assignments, husbands become “helpmates” to
their wives, doing whatever they are asked to facilitate the success of the event.
But this is essentially a time when women must do what they do best. The
men joke among themselves that they have “nothing to do”; they take a passive stance on the sidelines of a flurry of female activity.
The men do, however, become active on the night before the feast. You
will recall that it is their task to cook the sauce for the spaghetti and this they
do, usually out in the garage. But again we note that women have prepared in
advance all the ingredients necessary for making the sauce. In contrast to the
decorative and blessed foods for the altar, prepared by women alone, the men
are given the task of preparing the plain, unsacralized food.
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Journal of American Folklore
(100, 1987
Finally, in the ceremony itself, the most salient, and for our purposes, the
most instructive symbolic reversal occurs. While women act like “kings” presenting the Holy Family and saints with gifts of food, the men become “mothers” to the saints, serving them, encouraging them to eat, and cleaning up after
them when they’re finished. These days, the saints are usually played by children or young adults, making more dramatic the ceremonial moment when
men play the part of mothers.
This particular reversal is most important for understanding a key differ-
ence between the rites of inversion centered on the ideology of reproduction
and those centered on status and hierarchy. Usually when men perform women’s roles as part of rites of inversion there is a high degree of mockery, extre-
mism, and degrading behavior. In contrast, inversion in the St. Joseph’s Day
ceremony briefly allows men to play the role of nurturer, which they do with
pride, affection, and love. When rites of inversion forward the ideology of
reproduction, the stakes are different.
Symbolic inversion is often viewed from the perspective of a classically
dualistic ontology. Rites of inversion are typically interpreted as cultural moments wherein the prescribed oppositions between male and female, ruler and
subject, strong and weak, are reversed to allow the brief ascendency of the
powerless over the powerful. In contrast, we view the symbolic inversions
made central to the St. Joseph’s Day celebration as revelatory of a quality of
difference, not opposition, between male and female-a sense of difference
and hence a division of labor that defines both men and women as powerful
in accordance with their distinct roles. Men are considered the head of the
household, and as such their power accrues through a given sense of authority.
They are the primary breadwinners, and productive labor is the basis of their
status. Women are considered the heart of the household; their power accrues
through intimacy. They are the bread givers, and reproductive labor is the
basis of their importance.
Gifting and Sharing
If we are to fully understand the power of these tactics of inversion and exaggeration in foregrounding the value of the female, we must bear in mind the
symbolic context in which they operate: the context of the gift. For it is this
devotional act-the “giving of an altar” by a woman to San Giuseppi, which
provides the material and spiritual focus of the feast day, and which is symbolically manifest as the central metaphor of women’s work in general-a kind
of work feminist Mary O’Brien has called “reproductive labour.” The value
created by this type of labor is not market value, but a value that she describes
as representing “the unity of sentient beings with natural process and the integrity of the continuity of the human race” (1981:16). At the heart of this
labor is the supreme gift of all womankind: the gift of life. The exaggerations
and inversions operative during the St. Joseph’s Day celebration result in a
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455
hyperbolic display of these life-giving and life-sustaining capacities of
women-a display that we see as a testament to the very power base of women’s reproductive labor.
At the core of the St. Joseph’s Day ceremony-the ritual reenactment of the
Holy Family’s search for lodging-is the central gift that grounds all women’s
reproductive labor-what O’Brien calls the creation “of another and needy
human being.” We are referring, of course, in this instance, to Mary’s labor
and delivery of the Christ Child. As the Holy Mother prepares to give birth,
the earthly mother prepares a nurturing place for the sacred birth. It is through
her capacity as caretaker and nurturer that the earthly mother is able to facili-
tate this most sacred of events through her gift of hospitality. Although the
day is dedicated to St. Joseph, the male patron of the family, the central story
around which the day’s events are constructed focuses not on him per se, but
on the women who lodge and feed his Holy Family. The dramatic pinnacle of
the narrative enacted on this day is the moment when the altargiver finally
opens her doors to the holy pilgrims, inviting them into her home and heart.
With tears of joy in her eyes, altargiver Sally Cantarella opened the door of
her house to embrace her Holy Family and saints with the traditional words,
There is room for Jesus, Joseph and Mary
This is no longer my house.
It is that ofJesus, Joseph and Mary.
In giving over her home to the Holy Family, the altargiver offers the very
heart of her own worth, and so dedicates herself to a process of life that she
shares with all womankind. Her gift of food and lodging is a gift of cooperation and collaboration with Mary, symbolically insuring the continuity of the
human race through one more generation, and the safe delivery of the Blessed
Redeemer for all time.
In Sicily, this dramatic show of hospitality and sacrifice to the Holy Family
was traditionally extended into the community with offerings of food to help
the poor and homeless (Speroni 1940:135). In Sicilian-American enclaves today, the feast is held within the Sicilian communities, yet much is made of the
fact that the doors are open for anyone to participate in the feast. Sally Cantarella explained how a cedar branch is placed on either side of an altargiver’s
front gate to indicate that that house is open for a feast. “So anyone driving
down (the road) who knew of the tradition would know they’re welcome.”
As “strangers” from Austin, we folklorists were told how especially welcome
we were. To bring strangers into the intimate home environment is an ultimate act of hospitality made possible by the special dispensations of St. Jo-
seph’s Day.
The woman-centered nature of the gift on this feast day determines a mode
of activity that is distinctly female: women unite with other women in an extended kin network to cook, clean, bake, decorate, construct, serve, and do
whatever else is necessary to get the job done. Although the initial promise is
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Journal of American Folklore
(100, 1987
made in a highly personal and individual act between a woman and her saint,
the gifting is realized as an elaborately orchestrated act of kin collaboration and
cooperation. As one altargiver put it, “When you’re helping someone else
you’re actually doing the labor. And it really is [labor].” The nature of this
help is fundamentally cooperative and negotiated; no one woman has expertise
in every aspect of the altar’s preparation. Instead, each woman brings with her
a special talent, recipe, or other resource that is pooled, discussed, and negotiated throughout the process of altar construction. The decidedly womancentered etiquette of hospitality during this event requires that the hostessthe giver of the altar-feed, nurture, support, and encourage her kin-based
crew; her particular exper