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Mormon folklore is a body of expressive culture unique to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and other sects of Mormonism. Mormon folklore includes Folklore, oral history, popular beliefs, Tradition, music, , and material culture . In folklore studies, Mormons can be seen as a regional group, since the core group of Mormon settlers in Utah had a common religion and had to modify their surroundings for survival. This Mormon Corridor includes Utah, Southeastern Idaho, parts of Wyoming and eastern Nevada, and a few towns in eastern Arizona, southern Alberta, northwestern New Mexico, southern Colorado, and northern Chihuahua, Mexico.
Verbal lore for Mormons includes stories that missionaries tell each other to encourage adherence to mission rules. Members tell stories about Mormon pioneers, The Three Nephites, and unseen benevolent spirits to bolster their faith. In pioneer times, folk songs alternately praised and punished prominent leaders like Brigham Young.
Common customs for Mormons include reciting conversion narratives, which is especially common during fast and testimony meeting. Married members also commonly tell how they were inspired to choose their spouse, and some women with children recount that a vision of a future child inspired them to have more children. In the Mormon regional area, creative date invitations are a common way for teenagers to ask each other out. Pioneer Day is a state holiday in Utah, where members patriotically celebrate their religious predecessors.
Pioneer handicrafts were inspired by the many cultures that came together in Utah. Handicrafts were initially a necessity, and pioneers developed techniques to adapt their skills to the materials on hand. Later, the Relief Society promoted handicrafts as improving mental health. Along with quilting and needlework, pioneers also made Hair jewellery, human hair wreaths, and silk thread. 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. Tombstones in this area commonly depict clasped hands or a Mormon temple. Mormon fundamentalists have different folklore from Latter-day Saints. They draw on their shared heritage of experience in government raids to unify them, and enjoy folk dancing.
They commonly tell stories about how new missionaries, or "greenies", are initiated into the existing missionary group through pranks, even if these pranks never occurred. Learning missionary slang also helps new missionaries feel like part of the missionary community. Missionaries often tell stories in which some missionaries try to escape mission life but are discovered. One common "unauthorized trip story" tells how two missionaries write their weekly reports in advance, entrust them to their landlady, and embark on a sightseeing tour, only to be caught when their landlady sends the reports all at once. Another common story tells of a missionary who decides to break mission rules and participate in a sports tournament, only to be discovered by their mission president when their picture appears in the news. These stories focus on trickster heroes who fail and embody the group's childish fantasies, acting as "an approved steam-valve for the group". In some stories that encourage obedience, a missionary disobeys the rules and suffers disastrous consequences. Other stories tell of missionaries miraculously saved from danger. Missionaries also tell stories about getting the best of a hostile world, even if it causes other people to suffer. Missionaries in such stories shake the dust from their feet after leaving a city that was unresponsive to their message. After performing this ritual, the city is destroyed through a natural disaster, war, or economic depression. Stories where people insult missionaries, only to come to an untimely end, are common.
The Three Nephites are three Nephite disciples chosen by Jesus in the Book of Mormon to never die. In modern Three Nephites stories, one or more of these men appear to give assistance to those in need and then mysteriously disappear. The assistance ranges from providing childcare to fixing a car. 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."
Many Mormons engage in genealogy research in order to perform baptisms for the dead. One common folk narrative is for a researcher to have lost hope of finding more information, only to miraculously find it in a book or cemetery. There are also many stories of spirits helping church members to perform their temple work for the dead or conveying their gratitude somehow.
Marriage confirmation narratives, told in communal cooperation settings, relate how people let God or a church leader decide whom they should marry. This helped them to overcome their anxiety about whom to choose to marry. The folk belief that there exists only one suitable marriage partner, perpetuated in Mormon media but not supported by Mormon theology, exacerbates this anxiety. Generally, marriage confirmation narratives support the idea that righteous living within Mormon expectations will lead to blessings like receiving spiritual revelation about who should become one's marriage partner and having a happy marriage. Such narratives help reinforce Mormon ideas about Mormons being a chosen community who receive special spiritual experiences, and help establish and fortify socially desirable behavior.
Some Mormon women experience a vision of a future child that inspired them to have more children. If the next child is different from the child in the vision, the woman knows that the child is still "coming" and has another child. Margaret K. Brady documented this narrative type and sees it as a way to relieve Mormon women from the guilt they feel about thinking not to have more children, because the vision encourages them to change their mind and have more children. Sometimes these women share this experience in a visionary narrative. Telling the story reinforces the woman's spiritual identity, thus giving her a measure of power in her religious community.
The LDS Church encourages families to meet together in "family home evening" on Monday nights. Assignments for prayer, song, lesson, game, and treat are often rotated between family members on homemade charts. Certain rituals are performed during life events. After a baby is born, it is given a blessing, usually by their father with other male relatives and friends joining the blessing circle. Children are usually baptized at age eight, and receive a patriarchal blessing sometime in their teens. Young men and women may volunteer to be a missionary. In LDS funerals, the deceased wears their ceremonial Temple robes to be buried.
In Utah where Pioneer Day is an official holiday, the day is celebrated with fireworks and historical reenactments. However, outside of Utah, observance depends on local members; often a congregation will have pioneer-themed talks but no festivities. Dutch Mormons tend not to celebrate it, but in Germany, Pioneer Day is popular among Mormons.
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.
Relief Society crafts are one way that folk art is disseminated between Mormons. In 1963, crafter Ruby Swallow made resin grapes using old Christmas ornaments as molds. She presented the craft at a stake homemaking activity, and soon after taught her technique in a local craft store. The craft remained unusually popular, and many homes in the Intermountain West had a set by the 1970s. Eleanor Zimmerman, who helped popularize the grapes, said that the craft was popular because it was handmade but "looked store-bought." Mark L. Staker, a curator for the Museum of Church History and Art, believes that the staying power of resin grapes is partially because they were made as a community, and also because Relief Society Magazine began emphasizing arts and crafts in 1963. One popular genre of crafts turns inexpensive utilitarian objects into decorative ones.
Utahns created a Utah quilt guild in 1977 to promote and preserve quilt making techniques. In documenting pioneer quilts, the Utah quilt guild found a wide variety of styles, including paper piecing, applique, and crazy quilt styles. Quilts were a common wedding gift. (1997). 9780874805413, University of Utah Press. ISBN 9780874805413 Pioneer quilts often featured natural imagery, with sego lilies and beehives being special symbols of Mormon pioneers. English and humanities professor Yvonne Milspaw studied contemporary American regional quilting and found that Utah Mormon quilters were the most innovative and relaxed about traditional quilt patterns. Pictorial quilts and quilts that incorporate memorabilia, like boy scout badges and silk-screened photos, were common. The annual Springville Quilt Show accepts both hand-stitched and machine-quilted quilts.
Hair jewellery and wreaths were among the popular handicrafts in the 19th century, especially in the 1860s and '70s. Hair flowers made by Mormons, like those in the rest of the United States, traditionally had a woman's hair for the petals and her husband's for the center. Watch chains made from hair were commonly sent to missionaries to remind them of family members. The Salt Lake temple entrance had a hair wreath containing hair from prominent church leaders on display until 1967. Hair wreaths containing hair from multiple people were displayed in public areas, symbolizing community unity.
In the 1850s and 60s, furniture was in great demand, but by 1869, there were enough cabinetmakers to create a variety of competing styles. 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. 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.
Other pioneer craftsmen tried to adapt to conditions in Utah. Potters made jars and pots for local needs. Local soil was high in Alkali soil, and traditional glazes were ineffective. Pioneers preferred the cheaper factory-made pottery, and by the end of the 19th century, only Erich C. Henrichsen's pottery remained in business, selling unglazed machine-made flower pots. Blacksmiths recycled any metal they could find and had consistent work to do, shoeing horses and repairing farm equipment. By the 1890s, most craftsmen were struggling to support themselves, as they could not compete with factory-made goods brought by the railway. Since the church's emphasis on emergency preparedness, some Mormons have created storage space for preserved food inside furniture.
Brigham Young instructed pioneers to build "beautiful" houses, and from 1847 to 1890, architects experimented with various decorations they found in house pattern books. Greek revival-inspired decorations included window heads in pediment shape, entablature, and plain cornice returns. For Gothic revival decorations, architects used intricate and spired to traditional house plans. Dormers were popular and were built in many varying styles. Late 19th-century styles like Victorian were not common. Traditional house plans came from Colonial Georgian architecture. External designs were usually bilaterally symmetric, with three distinct components, one of which was centered to preserve symmetry. Second-story windows were built direct above first-story windows in this style. Architectural eclecticism was common, and architects sometimes used unusual solutions to create symmetric facades.
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