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Forging New Family Traditions
| Article
# : |
17564 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1990 |
2,267 Words |
| Author
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Kathleen Prentice
Kathleen Prentice is a free-lance writer whose articles appear
in the Detroit Free Press. |
If the Fourth of July dawns clear in Corvallis, Oregon, the Erkilla family will pack the car and head for an oceanside picnic. While Ellie Erkilla flips hamburgers and hot dogs, her neighbors will arrive with potato salad and folding chairs for the evening fireworks display.
Nearly two thousand miles to the east, Ellie's brothers and sister will be hauling out their picnic gear and traveling north to Minnesota's lake country for their annual Independence Day picnic, a tradition that Ellie was part of until her move to Oregon more than a decade ago. Those Minnesota gatherings were the seeds of the traditions that Ellie and her family have cultivated since moving west. Joined by their neighbors - many of whom are new to Oregon - the Erkillas fill the void created by leaving the extended family back home by making their new traditions the cornerstones of family life.
Why are traditions so important? "Since the beginning of civilization, people have had rituals," says Bernice Weissbourd, president of Chicago-based Family Focus. Weissbourd believes that our traditions and celebrations help us define our cultural identities and strengthen our sense of family belongingness. "People need traditions," she asserts. "The songs, routines, or foods that are shared when we come together and are associated with any given occasion are repeated and become part of our socialization."
Blending Traditions
Pressures on the family structure and changes in familial roles during the past two decades have altered the way many families celebrate holidays. In record numbers, Americans have moved away from our extended families and lost touch with past generations. Often, local relationships are substitutes for long-distance ones at holiday time.
Many who divorce and remarry into stepfamilies preserve pivotal elements of their family celebrations by blending them into new traditions, as inter-religious and cross-cultural marriages become more prevalent, young families are combining religious festivals or cocelebrating religious holidays - Hanukkah one night, Christmas the next.
When she was growing up, Christmas meant a pine tree in the living room and cookies cooling in the kitchen to Nola Mae McBain, wife of Marc Krigel, who is Jewish. Last December, she and her stepchildren raised a traditional tree indoors, but then wound blue and white blinking
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