Mormon folklore
Mormon folklore includes tales, oral history, popular beliefs, customs, music, jokes, and material culture traditions.
Towns in the Mormon regional area have a unique combination of features, including unpainted barns, irrigation ditches, wooden moveable hay derricks, and Lombardy poplars as wind breaks.
Alta S. and Austin E. Fife are the founders of research into Mormon folklore, a discipline that has expanded greatly since the couple's initial work in the 1930s.
Golden Kimball was a member of the Seventy and a folk hero known for swearing and undermining authority; stories told about him are often humorous.
According to William Wilson, Three Nephites stories "reflect and reinforce church programs and, by endowing them with mystical values, place them beyond criticism or questioning.
Some of these informal ritualized expressions are so frequent that members joke about playing "testimony bingo" when they hear commonly used phrases like "I know beyond a shadow of a doubt" or "I know the church is true.
Folklore student Amy Ward studied the conversion narratives of lifelong members and adult converts to the LDS church.
She found that adult converts were more likely to describe their conversion was part of a long, unconscious search for religious truth.
Folklore scholar Eric Eliason notes that Mormons tend to prefer sincere, even humorous, conversion narratives over melodramatic or self-serving ones.
[17] Marriage confirmation narratives, told in communal cooperation settings, relate how people let God or a church leader decide whom they should marry.
Telling the story reinforces the woman's spiritual identity, thus giving her a measure of power in her religious community.
Assignments for prayer, song, lesson, game, and treat are often rotated between family members on homemade charts.
[2] The first Pioneer Day was celebrated in 1849, with Mormons in Salt Lake City marching in wards, or congregational groups, around Temple Square in a show of patriotism.
[24] In some missions, it is common to burn clothing to mark special missionary anniversaries, such as a tie after six months of service and a shirt after one year.
[2] Pine furniture, pottery, wool textiles, quilts, woodwork, decorative needlework, and toys have unique Mormon elements.
[1]: 33 In early Mormon history, pioneers gathered in Utah from Europe and other parts of the world, bringing their knowledge of handicrafts with them.
Local historian Shirley B. Paxman argues that the pioneers's limited materials combined with their isolation resulted in work that was not self-conscious.
[27] In the early 20th century, Relief Societies held monthly homemaking days to learn and practice household arts and crafts including needlework and quilting.
Furniture makers adapted designs to local softwoods like cottonwood, box elder, and red and yellow pine.
[33]: 37 William Bell, a cabinetmaker from England, worked for Brigham Young and made a variety of simple yet fashionable pieces.
He crafted a few unique pieces, including an octagonal rotating desk with painted graining to simulate other textures, and a reclining chair.
Ralph Ramsay, another Mormon pioneer furniture maker, used Bell's workshop to carve a large eagle that decorated the entrance to Brigham Young's property.
[33]: 55 Ramsay carved many other details iconic to Mormon architecture, including the original oxen supporting baptismal fonts in temples, the casework for the Salt Lake Tabernacle organ, and an ornate personal bed.
Blacksmiths recycled any metal they could find and had consistent work to do, shoeing horses and repairing farm equipment.
[26]: 76 Since the church's emphasis on emergency preparedness, some Mormons have created storage space for preserved food inside furniture.
Greek revival-inspired decorations included window heads in pediment shape, entablature, and plain cornice returns.
For Gothic revival decorations, architects used intricate bargeboards and spired finials to traditional house plans.
Starting around 1910, images of temples on gravestones appeared, reinforcing Mormon beliefs about families remaining together after death.
Fundamentalist communities strongly value frugal cooperative self-reliance, often home-schooling their children and relying on alternative medicine.
[2] Past government raids provide touchstones for communal memory, and members recount their own and their ancestors' experiences with persecution.
