Familial Culture

Culture is a way of life that is passed down from generation to generation. It is something that exists within families due to the fact that the traditions associated with a culture are taught by the parents to the children. My family continues to perpetuate the culture that is associated with being members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints because my parents taught us the things that members typically do. For example, we go to church for two hours every Sunday and once a month, on the first Sunday, we fast for two meals in order to show our faith. We also pay tithing because we know the great blessing that come along with doing such a thing. Some other cultural traditions associated with our religion include celebrating Christmas and Easter. I would not do most, if any, of these things if I had not learned them within my own family.

This method of passing pieces of our culture from one generation to the next is very beneficial for a lot of reasons, one of them being that it allows people to decide which parts of their culture they want to keep. If you like a part of your culture you keep that aspect "alive" by continually taking part in it within your household. However if you do not like something you simply stop doing it with your kids, or you just don't teach them it at all, and then it is no longer a part of your culture. For example, when my family first started out, we always went to my grandma's on Christmas because that is what she always did growing up, so we were expected to follow suit. However, my mom did not want to spend Christmas with our extended family, and us kids agreed. Going over to grandma's meant changing out of our pajamas and leaving all of our fun new presents behind. We just wanted to sit around and have fun all day, not have to go to grandma's and watch the adults exchange their presents and be really bored the whole time. So one year my mom decided enough was enough and she told my grandma we would spend Christmas Eve with everyone, but Christmas Day was ours.

I was really glad that we got rid of that part of our "culture", but there are still a lot of traditions that I would love to keep. Speaking of Christmas, one of my favorite traditions I have in my family is eating Fruit Loops with Eggnog. I know, it sound weird, but it is actually delicious; we add some milk as well so it is not as rich and thick. This is a part of my culture that I really want to perpetuate, which I will do by eating the same thing around Christmas time with my family. Another tradition I would love to perpetuate is the tradition of doing puzzles together as a family. Since I have such a big family, there is not a whole lot that we can all do together, but doing a puzzle is something we can all do together. So I would love to try and get my kids to like puzzles so we can continue this tradition.

One of the traditions that I myself would like to set aside is the tradition of eating a lot of leftovers. I totally understand that for my current household this is what works for us, but personally I really like cooking. So my hope (although we will see how realistic this goal really is) is that if I am a stay at home mom I will have time to cook a few times a week so we will not always just be doing leftovers, or having kind of a free for all when it comes to dinner time. I also want to set aside the tradition of playing a lot of video games. I do not see anything wrong with playing video games, but I think that it is also important to spend time as a family doing things like puzzles, board games, and card games. So my goal is to try and replace video games with other things we can do together as a family.