CHILDREN’S GAME FOLKLORE AND THE CULTURAL PERCEPTION OF THE CALENDAR
Abstract
This article examines the relationship between children’s game folklore and the cultural perception of the calendar. It argues that children’s games, chants, songs, seasonal performances, and ritualized play are not merely forms of entertainment but symbolic mechanisms through which children internalize collective ideas of time, nature, seasonality, social order, and ritual transition. Drawing on folklore studies, anthropology of play, calendar-ritual theory, and Uzbek children’s folklore, the article analyzes how calendar-related play encodes seasonal cycles, agricultural rhythms, lunar and solar temporal systems, religious holidays, and communal values. Special attention is given to Uzbek children’s seasonal game folklore, including spring songs, Navruz-related performances, Ramadan chants, rain-invoking songs, sun and moon motifs, and household-visiting practices. The article concludes that children’s game folklore functions as a living “calendar of culture”: it transforms abstract temporal categories into embodied actions, rhythm, movement, song, competition, imitation, and communal participation.
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