hotels. No, the reason for studying Bali ethnographically using a
Symbolic Interactionist approach has to do with the desire on the part of
almost all Symbolic Interactionists to better understand the basic princi-
ples of interaction based on symbols!
Some rudimentary comparisons may help. Why do “we” celebrate
Christmas every year on December 25? It has to do with a belief system
common to those people who consider themselves to be “Christians,”
in one sense or another. That belief is that a child was born in a town in
what is now Israel, around the year 4 BCE. (When the Common Era
“Gregorian” calendar was created a small error was made in designating
the year one and ignoring the convention that we count years starting with
zero.) That child is regarded as having been very special. I do not have to
tell most readers about Christmas. It is something taken for granted, at
least to some extent.^4 A good Symbolic Interactionist (SI) study could be
done of the celebration of that religious ritual holiday in many countries
today. We could study all of the attendant hoopla that goes with it. We
could compare the celebration of Christmas in the Netherlands with the
way in which the holiday is regarded in the United States. Many possible
research topics suggest themselves.
There are some Christians who would like to “bring the Christ back into
Christmas,” but it is hardly likely that anyone will go back to the Puritan
belief that the celebration of December 25 with festivities, ornaments on
trees, gift giving, and the like was not really a Christian thing to do! The
pious pilgrims who came to America from Europe (England and Holland)
regarded Christmas as a day just like any other, a day to work. They were
against playing games like “stool ball,” a game that the young men who
were not Puritans (and who had come to the New World for a variety of
reasons) enjoyed. It was a game that was popular in the West of England
at that time. William Bradford, the “governor” of the Plymouth colony
was a pious man who wished to pray quietly at home after a long day’s
work. He was upset by the “joyous bedlam” on such a holy day. “Bradford
proceeded to confiscate the gamester’s [sic] bats and balls. It was not fair,
he insisted, that some played while others worked” (Philbrick, 2006,
p.128). Today most people are slightly shocked to find out that the Pilgrim
Fathers did not celebrate Christmas as anything other than a religious day
and even worked on that day! Many do not know that the Christmas tree
was not in common use until Queen Victoria’s husband, a German, made it
popular in Britain.
Many people do not believe in any kind of specifically religious rituals,
ofcourse. They would rather go to a rock concert or a sport event. For
92 J. I. (HANS) BAKKER