Multicultural Christmas & Raising children

Christmas is a great opportunity to show our kids that our cultures are not in competition, they complete each other! A blog post about our multicultural Christmas traditions and the thoughts behind them.

Re-thinking our own traditions

Children teach us so much, iIncluding new angles on some rooted cultural aspects and traditions. As a result, we might rethink and evaluate how do we want to celebrate and perpetuate traditions within our family.
This process might already happen in each family. But it might be a little bit more complex in multicultural families.

Adapting traditions

Our Portuguese-German family has it’s share on Christmas traditions from both side. It is near impossible to incorporate every Christmas related aspect in our celebrations. But it doesn’t mean that is not a good thing. We get to decide what makes more sense for us. Also those decisions are not eternal. We adapt the Christmas traditions and cultural aspects to our present situation.

Our multicultural Christmas traditions

As a mother of multicultural small children on continuous learning process, I would love for them to feel connected with both sides of their nationalities. And perceive being “half-half” as something positive and including. I believe that this perception starts to be build at home. It starts with me being excited to do some Plätzchen (German Christmas cookies) and my husband being delighted while eating Bacalhau (Codfish).

Multicultural Christmas traditions and competition

Our mono-cultural traditions do not have to compete with the “other” culture. There is a possible connection between our cultures and traditions, and we focus on what makes them complete each other!