Your heritage is the real gift

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Saturday, December 3. 2016

Your heritage is the real gift

When you have kids and enter middle age, you think about what you will leave behind you for the future, for future generations in your family line. Everybody does that, I think, in their own way. It's the way culture and subcultures are maintained.

Valued (or not) material items and photos are one sentimental part of that, but these things become diluted and dispersed over time, as does any money that is left behind. A family's cultural traditions, habits, and pleasures are the best inheritance to leave behind with hopes that they will carry meaning and value as far into the future as you can throw them. Messages from the graveyards - from your own future graveyard, and those of your ancestors.

The parental job is transmission of genes and culture, and the provision of food and shelter. That's about it, but it's not an easy job in today's world. If you were a serf on a lord's estate in England in 1300, it was an uncomplicated if tiresome job.

What's your opinion?

Posted by The Barrister in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 13:36 | Comments (7) | Trackbacks (0)

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To be honest, sometimes I think imposing traditions on kids is more of an act of jealousy than a gift-- a refusal to give up the past, even though all worldly glory is transitory.

#1 peter on 2016-12-03 14:29 (Reply)

I've never been a big fan of tradition, but I believe the best gift I can give is to teach my children and grandchildren about my faith in Christ and to set an example of humility, forgiveness, stewardship, generosity, and love, all with God's strength and grace, of course. I can't do it on my own!

#2 tnxplant on 2016-12-03 14:42 (Reply)

As dairy farmers we did not really have any special things to do on Christmas, as it was another work day to some degree.

With our children we tried to focus on the birth of Jesus Christ and how it's more important in what you give, than what you receive. and spending time with family.

#3 fjord on 2016-12-03 15:21 (Reply)

Traditions are important - very important - but not immutable. They connect us to the past, provide us a keel and rudder with which to steer into the future. Hopefully - - parents have taught their children well, since each generation needs to understand them and accept the ones they think most important. We are always one generation away from losing our traditions; once lost, they're nearly impossible to regain.

#4 The Old Salt on 2016-12-03 19:31 (Reply)

QUOTE:

A family's cultural traditions, habits, and pleasures are the best inheritance to leave behind with hopes that they will carry meaning and value as far into the future as you can throw them.

only so long as they're the Right Kind of traditions, habits and pleasures.

#5 Will Bithers on 2016-12-03 22:28 (Reply)

Traditions ,in my mind, binds a family. My children are in their late thirties and whenever we get together conversation invariably beomes a reminiscence of the past. The grandchildren join in and they get an understanding of why they have certain traditions and how it has been carried forward. We all end up laughing and carrying on about the past. Recently my grandson made an airplane out of tongue depressors for his grandfather. We hung it on the Christmas tree next to his father's sled made out of popsicle sticks from the 1980's. Perhaps one day a great grandson will have an ornament on the tree. Tradition a bit of glue in an ever changing world.

#6 pocono pam on 2016-12-04 01:52 (Reply)

Never in the history of man has the pace of change been as great as it is today. People like good traditions and they are needed to help adjust to change.

If you don't have any family traditions, start some.

#7 Mark M. on 2016-12-04 09:30 (Reply)

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Saturday, December 3. 2016

Your heritage is the real gift