Multi-cultural Monday: Holidays + Disappointments

The first in a series on multi-cultural marriage/family

It wasn't until I joined an online group of multi-cultural families that I realized I wasn't alone. The pain I was harboring over holidays in my multi-cultural marriage was not isolated. So many marriages and families, whether they identify as multi-cultural or not, struggle especially around the holidays to incorporate traditions or build new ones that bring meaning to their lives. This is my experience in mourning and reinventing the holidays in a way that works for our family.

*** I was a new bride. It was our first Christmas together with my husband's family. There wasn't a Christmas tree at my in-law's house much less a trace of holly. There wasn't anything that qualified as a Christmas cookie or really anything sweet in supply. Presents weren't a big deal, nor was having a decorative manger or singing Christmas carols or gathering with a big group of family and friends. These were the accoutrements of a holiday that I had come to love and look forward to with my own biological family, in spite of the pain of divorce and the loss of family members that had placed a strain on the holiday in the past.

We sat, my in-laws, my husband and me, on the floor of their living room on Christmas night, watching "Pirates of the Caribbean." I went to get the pint of ice cream I had bought at CVS. I served a bowl to my father-in-law. "Why I can't understand they talking?" asked my mother-in-law as she tried to follow the movie. "Because it's pirate talk," my husband explained. Why can't I understand this Christmas, I thought. I feel like pirates have jacked my white Christmas. *** My in-laws immigrated from Korea to Canada in the late 1970s. Christmas in their post-war Korea was not about decorating or consumption. It was, like the rest of life, about survival. In my in-laws' faith tradition, to which I had converted, Christmas is celebrated but not not as a "high holiday" as in other traditions. They were just happy to have their children home and to eat well and celebrate blessings.

*** I was angry, and I didn't want to feel angry at Christmas, I told my husband. As a fixer, my husband asked me what I needed. (What I needed was an attitude adjustment, plain and simple, but I wasn't ready to see that yet.) I wanted a tree and lights or just some simple marker that this was Christmas, I said.

But of course, it wasn't really about the tree. It wasn't about the cookies or lights. It wasn't about watching incomprehensible pirate movies on Christmas.

I just wanted to feel that I had not given up all of my traditions in order to be a part of this new family. 

I think a lot of us feel this way, even if our marriages/families are not cross-cultural. The totems, the traditions, the reminders of from whence we come are important to us. It's not our job to impose these on others, but we get to bring strands and sprinkles of them into our new family. It's our job to do so. Frustrating though it may be, it's not our spouse's job to know what tradition is important to maintain if we don't share this with them, explain why it matters, and be willing to help institute it.

After ten years of marriage, my husband and I start thinking about the holidays, especially Christmas, around this time so we can look forward with anticipation rather than dread. We plan activities we can do with my in-laws, we think about the presents we'll buy or the acts of service we can coordinate with our church to bring more cheer to the season. The goal is not to do a museum installation of my childhood Christmas at my in-laws' house. The goal is to incorporate threads of my traditions with new moments that bring meaning to our family time which is a big fat Korean-Irish-Italian blessing in itself.

And you? Have you blended your childhood traditions with new ones in your marriage/family?