What are traditions? As children we love them although we don't know they are traditions yet. When I was a teenager I thought they were old fashioned, rigid and simply uncool. It is interesting how things change the older you get and how a need to obtain traditions arises once faced with foreign traditions and a lack of familiar traditions.
Let me tell you about some of my favorite Christmas traditions.
advent,
wreath, worship songs, grandpa, quiet lights, gingerbread, Christmas markets,
Weihnachten = holy night , besinnlich, advent Nikolaus day
In my family the focus was ....creative gifts, apreciation. I don't think I ever believed that the "Chrirstkind" had brought gifts. We were taught that Christ was the gift to the world, that's why we give gifts to each other as a symbol.
24 th intimate family, 25 grandmas b-day, relatives.
Not surprisingly Christmas in the "new world" is a blend of European and other customs. The Christmas tree was introduced by German settlers. The stockings on the chimney are British heritage.
coca cola
cookies and milk
songs more seculary
lights colorful, more like summer party, people dress up with ornaments and ugly sweaters, reminds me more of carnival. Honestly I find a lot of decorations completely overdone, cheesy, geschmacklos
greed, biggest gifts, everybody opens the same time, shopping sales the next day, comercialized
(photo of cheesy stuff)
cookies w frosting
The biggest difference: Who brings the gifts on Christmas?!
I remember being completely jet-lagged and watching the 3D version of the "Polar Express" during one of my trips to CA. I could not understand how everybody was so excited about the movie because I was just wondering the whole time what the elves had to do with Santa. The idea of actual elves helping Santa to make toys and wrap gifts was just too weird to me. For those of you who don't know: in the US Christmas has more to do with Disneyland and magic than with the biblical report and Christian symbols. I mean since when do reindeer fly? And did you know that you have to put out milk and cookies for Santa to bribe him to stop at your house? Oh, and by the way, he lives at the North pol the rest of the year. The so-called "Christmas songs" reflect that as well. They have mostly secular contents about snow, winter, family,emotions and gifts.
As you can imagine quite a challenge to form our own family tradition of two so opposite approaches to Christmas. It seems like whatever traditions you grew up with make you "feel like it's Christmas" and if they are missing it just doesn't feel right. And in our case it's not just a variation in family customs but also a different cultural version.
So, which story are we going to tell our children? Probably the nativity story!
Differences summed up:
story
Christkind -Elves
Nikolaus - Santa Claus
decorations
cookies
gingerbread, almonds nuts, spices, chocolate - artificial colored sugar frosting, super sweet fudge
songs
originally Christian songs - seasons songs (it's all about being PC, right? I'm surprised they still allow the word "Christ" in Christmas)
level of commercialism
I decided to write this blog as part of my cultural integration process. After 2 ½ years of living in California I realize more and more that cultural integration is not a one way street but requires mutual openness and willingness to dare to think outside one’s own cultural box of concepts of “right” and “wrong”, “normal” and “weird” without judging and/or ridiculing what is foreign to one’s common ways of doing life. With this blog I hope to make a contribution to the improvement of this mutual understanding and invite my family and friends both American and German to be part of this process. Please note that this blog does NOT intend to reinforce any stereotypes or make unsophisticated generalizations but only portrays the personal experience of a German girl born in the heart of Swabia and her story of immigrating to a Californian metropolis of the extra large kind namely Los Angeles (4 million). Whenever I will post general articles with general opinions I will mark the content that relates to MY personally experienced challenges, struggles, discoveries and revelations. As I am writing part of this in retrospective there is no particular order to the postings. Feel free to share comments on YOUR experience with keeping in mind that the purpose of this blog is to foster UNDERSTANDING and not to OFFEND anybody! Due to the nature of the subject offense of some kind will probably occur at some point so I apologize before hand and encourage everybody to be a constructive part of this. As a good friend of mine who lives in a inter-cultural marriage as well always says: “Remember, it’s just different.”
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
