My Family Culture

In the event that My family was evacuated to a new country or refugee camp, the three things that I would take that represents our family culture are our family Bible, family photo album, and recipe box.  I choose these items because they reflect   my family values, beliefs, traditions, practices, and culture. The Bible reflects our religious practices, beliefs, and guidelines for living a Christian life that are important to our family culture.  My family finds much comfort,  peace, and hope from reading many of the passages especially in times of adversity. Within my Bible are pages for recording information such as outlining a family tree, births, deaths, marriages, baptisms, that I have completed that gives some history about our family. My family photo album includes pictures of family that has passed on,  pictures of my children and grandchildren as they grow, graduations, marriages, births, baptisms, holiday celebrations,  family vacations, special events, accomplishments, and more. It represents the importance of family, values, traditions, and more as well as a good deal about what my family sees as important. Much of my family culture revolves around southern tradition, coming together cooking, and enjoying southern food especially during holidays and special events, which is why I would take my recipe box that includes recipes for my family’s favorite foods.

It would be very hard to choose just one artifact and I really pray that this exercise never becomes reality.  Being the elder in my family, I would probably choose the family photo album as my family and our values are important to my life.  It could be used to teach my grandchildren about our family culture and to help them understand their family history.  I believe I could keep our religious practices, and beliefs alive giving them comfort in the event my Bible was taken because its teachings are engrained into my life, heart and mind.  As far as southern cooking, I have been doing this my entire life and can do from memory and so can my older children. The pictures offer a visual for discussion about our family to its youngest members and can play a huge role in keeping our culture alive throughout generations.

I have learned from this exercise just how important passing my family’s history  and its values down to the younger generation in my family really is to me. I think I have taken this for granted.  I’m sure the family photo album along with discussion will become a new tradition in future family gatherings. I also learned how important these artifacts are to who I am as well as how blessed I am to have easy access to these things and that it would be devastating to lose anyone of these representations of my culture.