Among-Among 🍽 Attending A Traditional Shaving Of Baby's First Hair Ceremony
A few months ago a cousin and his spouse welcomed a new addition into the family and per Javanese tradition, held a shaving of the baby's first hair ceremony at home. Usually family members and children from the neighborhood are welcomed to take part, but with everything that happened the last years, only a tight knit group was invited of course.
Growing up, I learned the Javanese term among-among, which I equated with "shaving of baby's hair ritual". After some online research I learned that it means small "slametan" (a collective Javanese festive meal ritual), where mostly children take part in, being served rice with gudangan (greens and eggs) and that the ceremony of shaving a baby's first hairs is called Selamatan Selapanan.
Because I had arrived later than the given time, I must've missed the ceremonial part, but was just in time to snap some pictures of the rice table (berkat) before being wrapped in cleaned banana leaves. With among-among, there's usually a rice porridge served to the kids, but this time it was an evolved recipe that I didn't know.
There were also bread, cooked plantain, sweet potatoes, taro and sweets. Bami goreng (egg fried noodles) couldn't be missing and cucumber even made it on the table. Furthermore is pejeh (fried rice flour snack with peanuts among other ingredients) a staple in the berkat.
According to some family members stewed chicken or any sort of chicken isn't usually served during among-among and I remember when I was younger, that I was disappointed not seeing meat in my berkat. But times and traditions change or traditions change with the times, however one prefers to call it. The eggs are a staple though, because those are usually served with the gudangan (greens and eggs).
And here's the berkat neatly (un)wrapped in banana leaves, that I finished on the spot. A family member advised me to put half of the portion on a plate and eat the other half at home and I said I could easily finish it in one swoop, so a plate wasn't necessary.
And that's how some family members keep to and evolve the among-among and shaving ceremony of a baby's first hair. Whar are some of your traditions involving babies? Let me know in the comments below 🤓.
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A wonderful ceremony, you write with a lots of details that I haven’t heard of that before, well that what I expect the banana mostly a common fruit use in traditional ceremony, in Cambodia as well we never skip banana since it can easily adapt to many traditional ceremonies whether wedding or praying ceremony.
Thank you and trying my best to share a bit of my country and culture, so that generations after ours have something to look back into :)
It's indeed a versatile plant and fruit, because you can use almost every part of it and also make snacks, deserts, side dishes or main courses from it.
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super delicious food, I really like it, thank you for sharing
It's been my pleasure sharing a bit of culture that's been brought with ancestors to the "New World".
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I shouldn't have read this post while hungry, haha. There is some kind of ceremony here in Cambodia similar to this, but I think it's almost out of practice because the Javanese cultural influence has been gone for hundreds of years. But generally speaking, at the very least, the first haircut is talked about all over the village and is always big news even if nothing formal takes place.
Nice to see you in ASEAN Hive my friend, you're always welcome here, and I think especially our Indonesian members would be very curious to know about the Javanese of Suriname, your life there, etc.
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Thank you and yeah I've been meaning to write more about the evolved Javanese culture in Suriname, but then I'll have to find some topics to write about which sometimes require more "research" or maybe interviews.
At least that has remained part of the culture and I know hindu's also have this practice in their culture, but I don't know the name for it. I should ask my friends with Indian heritage more about it.
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