Let's Talk About Culture For a Minute, Family Culture

What a week!!

When I started college I knew exactly what I wanted to study and what I wanted to do with it. I majored in Humanities and I wanted to study cultures around the world and eventually be a humanitarian aid. I loved my classes and I thought it was so interesting the way other people lived and their history and customs. I found myself naturally wanting to include some traditions, foods, art, music, and customs into my life. 

Fast forward a few years I took a break from school and went on a church mission to Pennsylvania, had a few jobs, and now I am back in school studying marriage and family. I love my major but parts of me missed my humanities classes because I just loved learning about all that. This week in class we talked about culture and I was so excited! But it was family culture and my mind has been blown!

The way we defined it in my class is this - culture is shared values, beliefs, traditions, customs in an area, family, and relationship.

I had kind of a culture crisis this week. Like I mentioned before, I like to include other cultures into my life and a lot of the time it is whatever culture I surround myself with specifically movies, books, and tv shows. For example, I love Jane Austen. I love the history, the manners, the dress, the accent, etc. I have seen probably almost every adaptation there is on her books. This led to me branching out and watching any movie or tv show or reading any book that was set in Great Britain. PBS Masterpiece is my favorite thing, and yes I would pay specifically for that service. This led to me buying a teapot and teacup, drinking herbal tea (which I think is not great), looking up colleges in the United Kingdom I could transfer to, dream planning an extended vacation to every town and city mentioned in Jane Austen's books, reading and getting recipes on classic British foods. It was my whole world. The same thing happened with Australia, and now it is currently on South Korea.

My little sister got me hooked when I came back from my mission. I started listening to K-pop, watching Korean dramas, modeling my clothes after their style, learning Korean on Duolingo (didn't last long), and craving their food. I watch a lot of recipe videos! Something that I really loved was in these videos they would make food and tell stories about the nostalgia they get from the food. They would talk about how their grandmas would make this dish when they were sick, what they would make with their mom every year, traditional dishes, or my favorite, the street food. This made me wish I was part of this culture so bad. So I researched the closest place to get Korean food and Korean recipes.

I realized that going to these restaurants whether they be Mexican, Chinese, Thai, Korean, etc. I felt a little uncomfortable. Not in the way that they were mean or I was unwanted but in the sense that I literally had no idea what to get or what a food was. I realized that going to these places was fun because I got to eat and experience a different culture but it did not hold the same meaning as it did to those who grew up in that culture. This got me thinking, what is my culture? Obviously America is made up from a lot of cultures and I realized the majority of what we eat and do is from other cultures. Pizza from Italy, Hamburgers from Germany, etc. Where do I go when I want a nostalgic food? Where do I go when life gets hard and I need something familiar? Or, where do I go when something so good happens?

I go home.

I realized that my Mom would make certain foods that I love. My family had their own holiday traditions. We shared values and beliefs. We had our own way of doing things. We had our own culture.

I felt a lot better after this realization. The family culture is important and impacts every family member. My family culture impacted me and your family culture impacted you. Culture is important. 

The best part is that family culture is something that can be evolved and changed. In a family babies are born, children grow up, they get married, parents pass away, etc. Things change and with that the culture changes. You have an impact on the culture, and you can shape it. What do you want your family culture to be?

I would love to hear your thoughts and reflections in the comments!

- Emily