The Office: Every Obscure Schrute Family Tradition Explained
Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson) is known as The Office’s most bizarre character with an even stranger family history, including some traditions that almost defy belief. Throughout most of the series, Dwight is the Assistant (to the) Regional Manager and top paper salesman at the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin. With his cousin Mose, he also runs Schrute Farms; a beet farm that doubles as a bed-and-breakfast. Consistent with his obsession of authority, Dwight was a volunteer sheriff deputy and the Scranton branch’s safety officer.
Over the course of the series, he has given snippets of his family’s history that shape who he is as a Schrute man. The Schrute family is historically Amish and Pennsylvania Dutch, with a family beet farm located in Scranton, Pennsylvania. It is also hinted that Dwight’s grandfather fought for the German army in WWII and escaped to Argentina, indicating an ancestral association with Nazism.
Once The Office’s writers decided Dwight would be from an Amish family, they ran with the absurdity of the concept. Though not specific to the Schrutes, The Office dedicated an episode to the real German version of Santa Claus that Dwight was raised with: Belsnickel. Instead of naughty or nice, Belsnickel deems children impish or admirable, then hits the impish with a switch. Over the show’s 9 seasons, Dwight’s background became increasingly obscure as more episodes were dedicated to his family members and traditions.
Mourning seems to have a similar tradition across American culture, but the Schrutes deal with funerals and death in a much more unusual way. Though it doubles as a prank for Dwight, if a Schrute throws red dirt in someone’s face, they are invited to the funeral; if black dirt is thrown, they are not. The red dirt is fertile which implies affection for those who can attend, while the black dirt is grossly acidic and means there is no goodwill to its recipient. Dwight shows up to the office in a black tuxedo and top hat, claiming he is dressed according to Schrute mourning custom, but does not clarify if the tuxedo outfit or color black was the dress code. An important additional funeral tradition is to shoot the dead once they are in the grave to make sure they are actually dead, which began after a string of accidentally burying heavy sleepers.
Though The Office generally only depicts Dwight’s relationship with Angela, Dwight frequently discusses Schrute customs of courtship. One custom follows that when a man courts a woman, he throws crows’ beaks at her. If the woman accepts the courtship, she destroys said beaks. Dwight reveals that when a Schrute man has sex with a woman, his parents leave a bag of wild oats on his doorstep; a Schrute play on the idiom “sowing one’s wild oats”. The last relationship-based custom explored in The Office is how Schrutes get married standing in their graves, exaggerating the common marriage vow “until death do us part.”
The most frequent Schrute family customs revealed in The Office are those that involve Dwight’s childhood lessons. Punishment for the Schrutes involves a 3-year shun; Dwight was shunned from ages 4-6 because he did not save excess oil from a tuna can. When Dwight shuns Andy Bernard for betraying him, he reveals Amish shunning is the equivalent of “slapping someone with silence.” The most important custom for young Schrutes is to learn 40 rules by the time they are five (presumably Schrute-specific rules), or else they will be eaten in their sleep. Considering Dwight values success and loathes failure, it’s no surprise the childhood traditions most ingrained in his life involve authority and punishment.