Eating Christmas in the Kalahari

Jonathan Sabal

Feb. 10, 2010 [Due Feb.11]

ANT 1001 TV24A/ Gaunt

1^st year (Bus. Management)

Lee, Richard Borshay. “Eating Christmas in the Kalahari.” In Conformity and Conflict: Reading in Cultural Anthropology, 12 ed., ed. Spradley and McCurdy. Allyn & Bacon, 2008, 11-18.

Nothing sounds more like Christmas than butchering a 1200 pound ox and eating it for dinner. While that might sound crazy in some cultures, it is not unorthodox in Kalahari. Richard Boshay Lee had almost completed his work with the Bushmen and wanted to show his appreciation by following their tradition of giving an ox for Christmas dinner.

Now when I first started reading this piece, I thought this was just going to be a story on how different cultures celebrate Christmas. Boy was I wrong. Lee got himself the biggest, fattest, and juiciest (okay I don’t know if it was juicy) ox he could find. When he got back to Kalahari, he said that he had found the biggest ox he could have found. Then, the Kalahari people began to tell him that had mistaken. He had gotten an old and thin ox, which would be unable to feed everyone he was inviting.

This continued with each person he talked to and each experience made him feel more worthless about his ox picking skills. Now, I can’t say that Lee was a bad ox picker, but come on; it isn’t that hard to pick out the biggest ox. After the second conversation, I had figure out that they were pulling Lee’s leg. Everyone was telling him that they were going to go to bed with rumbling stomachs and perhaps a fight would break out because of unequal portions. I just couldn’t figure out why they were joking around with him. I mean in our culture, when we give a gift or anything generous, we usually thank them for it. But here, no one thank him for getting the biggest ox he could find.

When the moment finally arrived, and they unloaded the ox, everyone still was making fun of Lee’s ox hunting. In that moment, where Lee couldn’t understand what was going on, he finally learned that they playing with him. I would have been as confused as he was and I would have of course started to ask questions. When he asked one member, who had told him a fight would have broken out because there wasn’t enough food, he told Lee, that this was the way they kept people from becoming too arrogant. I read this, and I thought we do the same thing. Not in the same context, but we riff on people all the time. When we do it, it’s out of fun, but when they do it, they’re making sure that people say humble. They know one day, that man who is too arrogant will get someone killed. So what started out me thinking of story about how our cultures differ on Christmas became how different cultures joke around with people and their reasons why. (461)

Bibliography

Lee, Richard Borshay. “Eating Christmas in the Kalahari”. In Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology, 12 ed., ed. Spradley and McCurdy. Allyn & Bacon, 2008, 11 – 18.