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Honors and Advances

Community Celebrates a Child's First Laugh

Front Page

Community Celebrates a Child's First Laugh

The Navajo have a tradition of celebrating a child's first expression of joy, as Carlos and I have learned in our three years working as pediatricians on the Navajo Reservation. The Navajo believe that prebirth baby showers are premature and can bring evil to a child. Instead, they celebrate a child at its first laugh. The child is thought to assume the personal characteristics of the person who makes him laugh. My nanny told me that for this reason, they always try to keep stingy relatives away from the small babies. We celebrated Macy's first laugh a few weeks ago.

Babies and the Holy People

At her first laugh ceremony, a relaxed Macy offers the community sweets and rock salt, symbols believed to guide the baby toward generosity as she grows up. (Photo by Bob Rothman)

Sharing a Feast

One of my patients and her family offered to provide a sheep and help with the preparations. They pulled up that morning in their van and opened the rear door to reveal a medium-sized sheep tied behind the rear bench. It had pooped on the carpeted floor, but they seemed not to notice. A shima (grandmother) quietly slaughtered the sheep, and then five of us hoisted it with a rope and hung it from a low branch of a tree. Several of the other women set to work skinning and butchering the carcass, all the while carrying on a lively conversation in Navajo, and we biligaana helped slice the meat and vegetables.

A medicine man told me that when a baby laughs for the first time, he signals that he is ready to learn to speak. Thus, in my interpretation, the child states his readiness to enter the human world.

Within a few hours, the various cuts of meat and organs were clean and ready for cooking. Two fires had been started, one in the bottom of an iron drum and the other in a hole dug in the dirt. Mutton stew simmered on a propane burner. Crisco had been spooned into what looked like a three-foot-long iron trough on legs, which was positioned over the second fire. Soon, rounds of dough danced in the sizzling grease, and we quickly filled a cooler with the golden fry bread.

The Navajo consume every part of the sheep. The most prized delicacy is the trachea, always eaten by the shima who slaughtered the sheep. Ach'íí, intestines wound around fat and cooked over the fire, is available to anyone who arrives in time to eat it.

Many Navajo are familiar with the various organs of the body through butchering. This can be useful when explaining medical illnesses in the clinic. The Navajo understand illness as a reflection of a soul in disharmony with the surrounding world, a theory that does not meld easily with the Western understanding of disease. However, when I draw a picture of the gallbladder to explain the pain of gallstones, the elders immediately nod and smile in recognition. They may still not understand why their gallstones cause pain, but at least they know what organ I am talking about.

After the many hours of preparation, the first laugh ceremony itself is quite minor. Each guest shook Macy's right hand in the traditional Navajo greeting to welcome her to the community. In return, she gave each participant sweets to ensure that she would grow into a generous person and rock salt to prevent her from becoming stingy. The shima blessed her in Navajo. The day had grown warm and sunny, and we sat down to a lively outdoor meal.

As he waited in the buffet line, a shiche (grandfather) thanked Macy, Carlos, and me for the meal. "We appreciate it when you participate in some of our traditions while you are here. "Ahééh," he said. Thank you.

--Ellen Rothman, HMS '98, now practicing on the Navajo Reservation

The opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily those of Harvard Medical School, its affiliated institutions, or Harvard University.