My little one came home from school with a project. Their class was making a “culture blanket” out of pieces of paper and they want the students to come up with things from their culture to populate their square of the blanket with.
For families who are more recent immigrants, I feel like this is an easier assignment. But as people whose ancestors are more distant immigrants, this was a bit harder. So much of our pre-immigration culture has been washed away by the melting pot. My husband’s father’s family is Italian (and a little Irish), but we don’t celebrate any Italian holidays, and we are not practicing Catholics. (We go to a protestant church.) My own family, much of that has been here since the Mayflower, those there is some more recent immigration from England. But the hardest part? Which of those things that make up our culture are things that our four-year-old has participated in or witnessed? Things that are not us borrowing? What can we claim as ours?
When asked what our culture is, our child’s response was, “HALLOWEEN!” I think on some level, this is what month we are in talking more than anything. But we did live in Salem when our child was born, so we leaned into it.
We decorated their piece of paper with a witch’s hat, wrote “WITCH CITY” on it, and then Salem, MA (just to be certain). Then, historian that I am, I peppered around the outside with little historical call outs to things other than 1692 – though, I did put that year on there, too. The Provincial Congress that met in Salem. Leslie’s Retreat. We decorated it with autumn leaves, celebrating the biggest Halloween party in the country. We put a tea pot on there, too, though my child was insistent that it was full of cold tea, not hot. (Tea drinking is big in this house.)
It is very easy to forget that the things you do every day, or every holiday, are part of your culture. I think, particularly here in the United States, where there are so many other cultures coming in, that it’s easy to think you have no culture. (Much like many Americans think they have no accent.) Culture is around you all the time. It is varied, and vibrant, and all of the incoming cultures are beautiful in different ways. It doesn’t mean you don’t have culture. You just might have to look a little harder to remember what it is.