Born in a heavily Mexican culture influenced home has taught my siblings and I that family comes first. Every major holiday, our family along with my uncles family, would gather and celebrate thsee holidays like Thanksgiving as one big happy family. Over the years things have changed, what once was a house full of younger children is now a home half-full with young adults. The tradition of celebrating as a family has been diminishing over the years but we all attempt to remain closely-knitted as we once were. However things change, people change, their views and personality also change. The tradition once enforced by our parents started to crumble and seemed to fade away in the new society we have adopted.
With all this unraveling infront of me, I can only agree with Amel Saleh. I still remember as a young child the amount of quality time we would spend together as a family during Thanksgiving and the stories and meaning told by our parentc on Christmas eve as we waited until midnight for the birth of Jesus Christ. Now this time has been replaced with a gift. It seems that today's society excuses time missed with an expensive gift, and to some people it is perfectly acceptable. To me, there is no substitution to time spent with love ones. There is no monetary value on time; yet, holidays celebrated in today's society permit the absence.
I have witnessed first hand the decreasing meaning of presents over time. Gifts I received as a child had more significance. My parents have never been of wealth, but the sacrifice my mother made to give us one gift to unwrap for the festive holidays, gave them meaning. It was not about the value in currency rather the significance of sacrifice; which, in the Catholic religion, was the symbolic sacrifice god made by giving us his only son. I'm not saying that gifts no longer have meaning but if we want these holidays to maintain its ethical value, we must educate and lead by example these values.
The value of present is dwindling and you are right because God gave his son and we symbolically give gifts in his name. Educate young ones so this trend doesn't continue through the generations.
ReplyDeleteI understand why you agreed with Amel Saleh. Everything is changing and people wish the bond that they have with their family relatives would still remain.
ReplyDeleteI too experienced the lessening of long held traditions in my family, almost exactly the same way you did as you grew up. Yet, even with the growing separation between family members, we all still attempt to reignite what used to once be happy and loving holiday celebrations. I guess this at least signifies that us, as a culture, still want to hold onto what used to once make these seasons great; however, we also still have allowed ourselves to fall victim to a conformist society in which we just "go with the flow" of things. Consequently, this just steals away the warmth and selflessness and turns the holidays into commercial free-for-alls.
ReplyDeleteSame culture, same teachings. We definitely have something in common about that. Family will always come first no matter what.
ReplyDeleteFamily is always first and I was raised the same exact way.
ReplyDeleteA gift with meaning is the best gift one can receive.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you when you said that we must educate and lead by example. Children these days don't seem to appreciate or know what Christmas is all about, they seem to think it's about getting lots of fancy presents. Families definitely should focus more about the meaning and experience rather than going broke to make their child happy for a couple hours.
ReplyDeleteI also agreed with Amel Saleh. The value of family time might be decreasing.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that growing up the meaning of the holidays have lost some of the meaning it once was. I would raher spend time with relatives that don't really get to see then make the holidays all about gifts.
ReplyDelete100% agree! Holidays start making more sense as we get older, and the significance really starts to show.
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