Why Celebration Is Essential: Rituals, Meaning, and Maya Wisdom with Dr. R. Jon McGee

What if celebration isn’t something “extra,” but something essential to living a meaningful, connected life?  If you're like me, I'm always looking for reasons to celebrate and enjoy life.  

 In this episode of Stories of Change and Creativity, I sit down with Dr. R. Jon McGee—anthropologist, author, and longtime Texas State University professor—at the Live Oak Podcast Studio to explore the topic of celebration. 

For more than forty years, Dr. McGee lived with and learned from Maya communities in southern Mexico. He explained how rituals create order in chaotic times and help people navigate change.

Inside Maya Ritual Life

Professor McGee takes us inside ceremonies shaped by rainforest ecosystems and centuries of tradition—

• incense drifting 
• prayers spoken in a distinct ritual voice
• balché, a fermented mead used to open a sacred, altered state

He reveals how metaphors woven into healing incantations—birds, winds, heat, and fever—carry cultural memory and symbolic meaning. 

Why Rituals Matter in Our Everyday Lives

From Christmas and communion to Thanksgiving tables and graduation, Professor McGee helps us see how our own traditions carry histories and stories forward. These familiar symbols—colors, foods, candles, music—are  anchors that help us mark time and feel connected.

How to Bring More Celebration Into Your Life

If you’re craving more meaning, we discuss some practical ways to create moments of celebration:

• Gather the people who matter most
• Choose symbols your group already loves
• Engage all five senses
• Make space for recognition and storytelling
• Keep it small—simple gestures can make a big difference

How do you celebrate? I’d love to hear.

If you enjoyed this episode subscribe, share with a friend who might need to celebrate more often, and leave a review.   Tell me the one ritual you’d never give up.

Learn more about Dr. R. Jon McGee here.

Recorded at Live Oak Studios on the campus of Texas State University.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Framing Celebration As A Human Need
• 0:40 Meet Dr. Jon McGee
• 3:42 First Encounters In A Maya Community
• 5:20 Language, Humor, And Being Welcomed
• 6:45 What Rituals Do For People
• 8:00 Farming, Healing, And Deep Symbolism
• 10:25 Teaching Ritual Origins And Student Reactions
• 12:05 Inside A Rainforest Ceremony
• 15:10 Altered States And Sacred Euphoria
• 17:20 Secular Rituals And Commencement Gaps
• 19:00 Customs That Grow Organically
• 21:15 Tourism, Economy, And Ritual Decline
• 24:00 Culture Change, Loss, And Preservation
• 26:00 How To Add Celebration To Life
• 28:10 Symbols, Senses, And Shared Meaning
• 31:00 Closing Reflections And Holiday Intentions

Transcript

Judy Oskam: 0:02

Welcome to Stories of Change and Creativity. I'm Judy Oskam, a professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Texas State University. I'm really glad you're here. And I want to share with you that the older I get, the more I've come to understand that celebration isn't only something we do, it's something we need. It's found not only in life's biggest achievements, which we always tend to recognize, but also in the small, everyday, daily rituals that anchor our identity. And that idea brings us to today's conversation. On this episode, I'm exploring this deeper truth with Dr. Jon McGee. Dr. McGee is an anthropologist and professor at Texas State University. And for more than 40 years, Dr. McGee has studied Maya communities in southern Mexico. Through his research on ritual and ceremony, he's discovered that celebration is more than an event. It's a way people understand change and make meaning. Well, together we'll explore how rituals evolve and why it's important for us to find ways to celebrate in our own daily lives. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

Dr. Jon McGee: 1:26

This is my 41st year at Texas State. I came in, I think it was 1985. And most of my career I've worked with Maya in southern Mexico. And I lived in a community of people who were not Christian. And so I spent about the first decade of my work studying their rituals and mythology and how that fit into other aspects of their society.

Judy Oskam: 1:58

Well, what led you down there in the first place?

Dr. Jon McGee: 2:02

Well, I have a diverse religious background. My mother was Mennonite, my father was Episcopalian via Catholicism. I was baptized by a Presbyterian minister, and you know, so I had a lot of re I grew up being interested in religion and did a master's thesis looking at the uh rich faith healing rituals of evangelical in evangelical churches. And then just when I was working on my PhD, I actually discovered the folks uh that I worked with by accident and just fell into that opportunity, and I worked with them for over 30 years.

Judy Oskam: 2:50

Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.

Dr. Jon McGee: 2:52

Yeah, it's very rewarding.

Judy Oskam: 2:54

Well, and you've gotten to know them and go back, and you know them by name. Yeah. And so you you've kind of lived with them as family.

Dr. Jon McGee: 3:03

Right. Yeah. And I miss them a great deal now because I can't. I mean, once I grew up, right, and married, started a family, my ability to spend a lot of time down there was, you know, curtailed a bit. But I I communicate with people in this community now by WhatsApp, which shows you the technology.

Judy Oskam: 3:25

Yeah.

Dr. Jon McGee: 3:26

Yeah.

unknown: 3:26

Yeah.

Judy Oskam: 3:27

Yeah. Well, and when you first started going down there, what was it that struck you uh uh about the differences? And this is a broad question between the culture you grew up in and the culture that you were visiting and living in?

Dr. Jon McGee: 3:42

I think what attracted me was it was so completely different. I grew up in the Midwest, you know, just Midwestern kid, I was a professor's son, you know, always grew up wanting to be an anthropologist, and um, but didn't think too much about the future. And so when I discovered these people, and um it this is l in the rainforest at the time I started working, no electricity, no roads, it was pretty primitive. And I I was in heaven. That was just glorious for me. It was like extended camping.

Judy Oskam: 4:24

Yeah, yeah. And and when you first stumbled into this life, because it really is their life, and and did did they let you in? And were you were you welcomed?

Dr. Jon McGee: 4:36

Yes. Uh they were very gracious. Um and I I think I was the community entertainment for a long time because I was learning Maya while I was there, and so the language mistakes I would make, they thought were hilarious. Uh the Maya are big on punning, and my name, John, which is Juan in Spanish, that's like the Maya word for partridge. And so endless jokes about you know my name and and then when I I became conversant enough in Maya, then I started making mistakes on purpose just to entertain. So I was sort of the village goof, I think.

Judy Oskam: 5:22

Well, and and as you as you lived your life down there, what what rituals or celebrations did you did you see and did you experience? Because I I want to kind of get into celebration and where does it come from? Why do we have a need and a desire to celebrate?

Dr. Jon McGee: 5:42

Well, I think human beings make we make up rituals, personal rituals, just to help organize our days. I mean, if you think about when you wake up, what are the first things you do? You know, you make a cup of coffee, you get in the shower, whatever. You know, we so we organize our days with little personal rituals, but on a larger scale, I think ceremony helps us make sense of the world and our place in it, and our place in the larger society. And in the case of the Maya, the more I learned about their rituals, the more I discovered. They were rainforest farmers. And so a lot of the rituals, about half the rituals dealt with agriculture, and the other half dealt with health and healing. And I discovered, you know, the more I learned was that a lot of the rituals were tailored into environmental changes in the forest around us. And the healing ritual, you know, in the absence of Western-style medical care, they had a very elaborate uh set of healing rituals revolving around like magical incantations that were very deeply metaphorical, you know, referring, you might be talking about a bird in your incantation, but it refers to a fever, you know. And so this depth of symbolism that they were using was something that just really surprised me when I when I first started, because I didn't recognize that in our own society. And and you know, now I think I I have a better understanding about rituals that we're familiar with in our own culture, you know, Christmas, Thanksgiving, you know, whatever, um, that those have an equal depth of symbolism to them. It's just that we often don't recognize where those symbols come from.

Judy Oskam: 7:58

Well, and how oh, through the years you've been teaching students about those things. And what's been the reaction when you sort of explain the history or the lore behind some of the traditions that you've experienced and that you've seen, but how do you tie it together so that they understand it?

Dr. Jon McGee: 8:16

Right. When I'm talking about the Maya, I've I've found in general that students are are interested and you know they they want to know more about that. But if I talk about the the origin of you know Western ritual or Christian ritual, they're often very surprised about where a lot of Christian ritual practice comes from. And so, you know, they're they're simply not familiar with it. And so you know, um equally interested, I think, but also if if the roots of a ceremony that they are familiar with and have practiced in their own churches a lot are different from, say, what they learned in Bible school or yeah, Bible study, then I let me say I think a university education is supposed to challenge people and broaden your horizons. So um some students like that challenge, others feel threatened by it. Sure. Yeah, and so sure. I I don't proselytize in class, I just you know say have an open mind.

Judy Oskam: 9:33

Sure, sure. Well, if you if you if you could take us back to to one of the first uh ceremonies that you've seen, can you describe that scene for us when you're out there and and in the rainforest? Uh can you describe what that was like? Sure.

Dr. Jon McGee: 9:49

Um first off, I I could not I didn't understand half of what was going on because men pray in a special ritual. It's a high-pitched, nasalized voice. It's different from your everyday speaking voice. And so I knew the layout of the ritual space and where I was supposed to sit and what I wasn't supposed to step over, things like that. But to try to follow, it was difficult to follow what was going on and why people were doing what they were doing when they were doing it. So at one point they're burning incense in these uh incense burners that have faces modeled on them, which represent they're sort of portals through which the deities receive their offerings. Um, they brew, one thing that really stood out is they brew a ritual mead, mildly alcoholic, but they brew, they ferment this called balce. And over the course of many rituals, they they've brewed this dugout canoe full of balce, and the men drink balce. You know, they have these drinking gourds, and the host of the ritual hands you a drinking gourd, and you're just supposed to chug it. Uh, you don't sit there and sip it, you know, you chug it. And so everybody around me is getting drunk during this ritual. And I I later learned it's supposed to ritually purify you, and in that state, you can hear the gods talking to you, and you know, things happen. But because just of my own background, you know, Northern European background, Europeans have a higher tolerance for alcohol than Native Americans. And so I'd be drinking gourdfuls of balce and sort of feel like I had some Nyquil, whereas the people around me, you know, are are getting stronger impact. Yeah, much, much that's a good way to put it. Yeah, much stronger impact. And uh so that that really caught my attention because, you know, with a Mennonite mother, and that was very different from you know anything I had seen before. Sure, sure.

Judy Oskam: 12:17

Well, if we're fun, yeah. Well, if if we take that back and we look at our our rituals and traditions today, and people always encourage others to enjoy life and experience life. And how how do we how do we allow ourselves to celebrate? And how does it become part of who we are?

Dr. Jon McGee: 12:40

Well, there it depends. If we're talking about religious rituals, most of the religions in the world with which I am familiar and I don't claim to know every single one, but many of them have some form of altered state of consciousness. And it doesn't necessarily involve, you know, chewing peyote or drinking something. It's because you can achieve an altered state of consciousness just through dancing, through drumming, and and so that you can in many and even in churches um in the United States, uh you can have people who create this euphoric or I would say create this euphoric state of mind. Um just through the uh singing and the dancing and the the activity during this uh church ceremony, um, which is typically defined as possession by the Holy Spirit. You know, and it feels wonderful, um and it's proof to them of the existence of the things they believe in, which is great, you know. I'm um nothing it nothing that I say here should be you know considered criticism. Um so the Maya, you know, drink balce. Some churches in the United States, you know, um like in Appalachia, they're very common. They're not very common, but that's probably where the largest concentration of them are. You know, people are possessed by the Holy Spirit, and it's it's proof to them, it's proof to the participants, or even those observing, that you know, the Holy Spirit can come down and possess you, and so your beliefs and practices are are the right ones. And I think you know, um that's a powerful thing, and it's different from secular rituals because I think of graduation ceremonies, you know, that um those don't impact people in the same way, right? Um which is too bad. I mean, if I wish like I've been to many, many commencements at Texas State, right? And I wish students I think students often don't internalize the significance of their achievement. You know, they people yeah, you don't have to wear a tux, but I see people in cut off shorts and flip-flops, you know, and um and they show up late, they're on their phones, and I'm saying, you know, this is a public recognition of your achievement. You should be proud of yourself, you know. You've you've done something that most people in the United States haven't done. So maybe if we had some ecstatic experience during our commencements, people would uh, you know, maybe parents take it more seriously, maybe, than the people who are uh who the ceremony is focused on.

Judy Oskam: 16:15

But some are wearing the shorts so they can jump in the river, which is a ritual that they are that the university is pushing really, and we have a river that runs through our campus. So it does turn into that type of a celebration at least.

Dr. Jon McGee: 16:31

So I think for the people who do that, that may be the most noteworthy part, you know, because in the sir in the ceremony, in the commencement ceremony, they're just, you know, people are sure flying across the stage or calling out names. And but if you with your friends, you know, and family watching on, you jump into the river at the end, that may be the most memorable thing to a lot of people.

Judy Oskam: 17:00

Well, and does that become does that become a celebration? Yes, absolutely. Yeah, sure. And what what are the components of a celebration? Uh it's must be a feeling.

Dr. Jon McGee: 17:17

I I'm trying to analyze it, but you're the expert on rituals and uh well, I I could you know I think different people might come up with different components of what constitutes a celebration, but I think people need to feel there's something to be celebrated. And then they have a way which is it might be regional, it might be national, but accepted as you know a way to express your feelings about what you've done. And so I mean, jumping in the San Marcos River is a great one. Actually, they do that at Oxford when they graduate. Oh, wow. Only the river they're jumping in is much shallower. So this is this is way safer. Wow. Wow. Um, yeah, so you know, you're and because it's the end of this ceremony and you're celebrating this achievement, you get to do something that you wouldn't ordinarily do, you know, and nobody cares. You can, you know, be fully clothed, jump in the river, and you know, and most people wouldn't do that in a normal day.

Judy Oskam: 18:35

Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Jon McGee: 18:36

So it's a marker of your of your achievement.

Judy Oskam: 18:40

Well, and is that what a celebration is? Is it a marker of time? And how do people, how should people think about that based on their history and their personal family history? Should they, should they, does it help? Does it help? I'm asking for myself here, but does it help, would it help me to celebrate more and look back at my family history? What what would that do for me as a as a human trying to get through life, you know?

Dr. Jon McGee: 19:15

Well, I think the celebration is an important component of marking an achievement, uh, some sort of achievement in your life, um, whether it's personal or with a group. Uh, however, I'm not sure how much our society has today has customs to mark a lot of our achievements. And so, you know, you graduate from college, your parents take you out to dinner and say they're proud of you, you know, which is great.

Judy Oskam: 19:53

But define what a custom is.

Dr. Jon McGee: 19:58

Um What's the difference between that? Something that is recognized as an appropriate way to express yourself in certain circumstances. I know I'm talking about a s a cultural custom, not just your personal routine.

Judy Oskam: 20:15

Sure.

Dr. Jon McGee: 20:16

Um so in San Marcos after at Texas State jumping in the river. Um and you I've seen, I've been here, you know, so long. I've seen I think jumping in the river grew fairly organically, right? Nobody said, hey, everybody, let's jump in the river to celebrate. So um people, I believe it's important, they tend to create their own. Um, maybe because in our society we don't have a lot of ways that we recognize to ex dancing would be one, you know, in celebration. Um meals, ritual meals to celebrate events. Um but things like jumping in the re river, I think, grow up organically. They just start happening and become a custom. I have 50 years ago, 40 years ago, when I first came to campus, people weren't jumping in the river. That's something that started maybe over the last 20 years.

Judy Oskam: 21:29

Sure.

Dr. Jon McGee: 21:30

Um so also, I mean, we create these things, these customs to celebrate, and some of them can be really destructive or negative, you know. Uh your team wins the Super Bowl or the World Series, and people burn couches, you know, and so that typically will only happen after, you know, your city's team achieves this, and it's something that's grown up organically, you know, people don't normally pull couches out into the street and set them on fire, but that also has become a way of celebrating, you know. Um I put in a little plug for my son who was on the um Baylor basketball teams, he was a graduate assistant on their coaching staff the year they won the national championship. And you don't think of Baylor as being a particularly wild place, right? Or Waco.

Judy Oskam: 22:45

Yeah.

Dr. Jon McGee: 22:45

But the night they had, you know, won that championship, there were students out burning couches in the streets in Waco. You know, so this is a custom that's right, just grown up organically and just hope people don't hurt themselves, you know.

Judy Oskam: 23:07

Well, going back to kind of circling back to your time with the Maya, and how did you see those traditions change as they became more Western, if you would? What what did you notice?

Dr. Jon McGee: 23:24

Um, I started working, living there in 1980, and by about 1985, there was a real change in how people were supporting themselves. Um they originally for hundreds of years they've been rainforest farmers. But they also have a fairly distinctive appearance, and because they're not Christian, there is a basically, and they often live around ancient Maya ruins, so there is this mystique around them, uh, which they realized and they started selling stuff to tourists, um, like at these ruin sites. And so if you're making and selling stuff to tourists, you can't be home preparing your fields. And so there is a change in the economy, um, where people more and more started relying on the income they could earn from tourism. And what I saw was um, much to my um mean surprise, really, was that very quickly, um as the oldest generation of men died, the men I was hanging out with mostly, and their you know, sons and daughters took over, they very quickly dropped their former religious beliefs. They didn't convert to Christianity, they didn't convert to anything, they just quit celebrating those rituals. And I realized the rituals were for the health of their fields, you know, and good harvests or for the health of their families. And if you're not farming, you don't need all these rituals for the, you know, for a good harvest. And if you have income to pay for medical care, which they recognized was effective, you don't need the other half of the rituals. And so basically, this change in their household economies propelled this the abandoning these religious traditions, which I mean, the earliest written records about these folks are from the 1790s, and in the 1790s they were doing the rituals that I saw when I first showed up. So how long that had been going on, there's no way to know. But for several hundred years at least, in the space of a couple of years, they just walked away.

Judy Oskam: 26:09

Wow.

Dr. Jon McGee: 26:10

Yeah. They'll do things for tourists now. If tourists come, they'll put on a ceremony or something, but not for their own religious practices.

Judy Oskam: 26:20

Yeah. Well, and you've sort of you've tracked that whole thing, and you've just had such a focus on that particular um group of people.

Dr. Jon McGee: 26:32

Yeah.

Judy Oskam: 26:32

Um, how does that make you feel after you see that?

Dr. Jon McGee: 26:35

And oh part of me is sorry um that there have been so many changes, but one day when I was, you know, feeling sorry for myself, then I realized that, well, you know, American society isn't the same as it was in 1980, you know, when I started working down here. We've changed just as much. Right. You know, um cultures change all the time for all sorts of reasons. So why should they be any different? So I just started documenting the changes and why I thought those were happening. It's fascinating to me. Yeah, at the same time, though, there's such rich symbolism in their stories and so many, you know, these therapeutic incantations and things, which I mean most lock and don't today adults are not literate. And so if people don't remember these things, they're gone in a generation. So I'd be sorry to see them lose this, you know, what I consider a treasure of information, you know, that was a part of their culture before uh they started having a lot of contact with the outside.

Judy Oskam: 28:02

There's no way to go back.

Dr. Jon McGee: 28:04

No.

Judy Oskam: 28:05

You can't turn the clock back, right?

Dr. Jon McGee: 28:07

No.

Judy Oskam: 28:07

Oh my god.

Dr. Jon McGee: 28:08

But we don't need many blacksmiths, you know, anymore, though, now either. So I mean, all cultures do this.

Judy Oskam: 28:15

Yeah. Well, if someone wanted to put more celebration in their lives, what what would you recommend? Would you look back at history? Would you look back at um events or customs, or where would someone start if they wanted to increase the celebration in their lives?

Dr. Jon McGee: 28:36

I think ritual is is a good thing precisely for that purpose. Um to to you you would want to gather the people who met most to you and shared your ideas, you know, with you, because it's a group thing. Um and I think the ritual has to reference something that is meaningful in your community. Um, and that that could be lots of different things. I I naturally gravitate towards religious rituals because that's what I have spent many years thinking about. Uh but the Passover celebration, you know, they're often ritual, religious rituals are often recreations of religious stories. Um and so if you have a community of devout believers, then those rituals are very meaningful to that group of people. Maybe less so for me who studies a wide variety of religions. Um but yeah, I mean, I think key components here are that. You have to be celebrating something that is meaningful to the people you're celebrating with, and the symbolism that you are enacting in your ritual has to refer to those shared beliefs. Because you're you're celebr in a religious ritual, you're celebrating those sh I mean communion is a you know recreation of the Last Supper, right?

Judy Oskam: 30:31

Um and and the symbols are music and visual, they're audio, visual, they're everything, right?

Dr. Jon McGee: 30:41

Physical, yeah.

Judy Oskam: 30:42

And uh sm uh sensory smell. Absolutely, yeah. Okay.

Dr. Jon McGee: 30:46

Yeah, sure. I mean, if you grew up, for example, in the um Catholic Church, you know, the incense, you know, the or I think of incense. I grew up in a church that was heavy on incense um as being, you know, I mean, that's a that has a very long history uh in Christian churches. So incense, the colors of the robes of the officiants of the ceremony, um the way your ritual space is decorated, you know, all of that is part of building this it most of it has deep historical symbolic roots, and it's a part of you you have to give people what they expect, right? You know, like a Christmas tree or or evergreen boughs on the altar or whatever that is. Um you know the the symbols have to be I said you have to give people what they expect. The symbols have to be meaningful to them. If they don't if they're esoteric. You know, if if I designed a a Christmas service based around computers, you know, people would come in and go, what is this? You know, what does this have to do with anything? Right. Um maybe another group, a group of computer programmers would think that was really cool. Yeah. So it can vary, you know. We make up our own symbols. So as a society, we're always cre we we are immersed in this world of symbols that we've created for ourselves. And a ritual works when the symbols are meaningful to you.

Judy Oskam: 32:43

And so the environment really does matter. So creating the environment really does impact oh, I want to say the audience, but the people that are there to receive whatever the celebration is, yeah, or to participate, right?

Dr. Jon McGee: 33:01

Absolutely. Just think about Thanksgiving, you know, and there are nationwide some fairly standard items of food that should be on the table for Thanksgiving. And then families also have their own, they've added their own add-ons, you know, to like I had, I'm gonna switch celebrations here, but I had never heard of like black-eyed peas on New Year's Eve growing up in the Midwest for New Year's Day until I got, you know, to Texas. Um or enchiladas. How did that start? I have no idea, but there are people for whom that is meaningful. Right, right. It's part of what you have to have, you know, on um New Year's Day.

Judy Oskam: 33:54

Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Jon McGee: 33:55

For me, Turkey, you have to have turkey on Thanksgiving, you know. Otherwise, it's not Thanksgiving. It's not Thanksgiving. That's right.

Judy Oskam: 34:01

That's right. I want to thank you for your contribution to history and to really kind of preserving history for us. I've read some of your work and I've seen some of your other videos, and I think it's a fascinating area. So thank you.

Dr. Jon McGee: 34:18

Well, thank you. It's been a very great pleasure to have chat with you.

Judy Oskam: 34:24

Well, as I wrap up my conversation with Dr. McGee, I'm holding on to the idea that celebration is something we can create. It's intentional. And with the holidays on the horizon, it feels like the perfect time to rethink what celebration means in my own life. Maybe it's lighting a candle for someone we miss or making a special dish that's been passed down through generations. What are some of your rituals? Think about how you celebrate. This episode was recorded at the Live Oak Podcast Studio on the campus of Texas State University. Thanks so much for listening.