Viva Vitality: Mennonite community hurting at holiday time
(This is a fictional story inspired by experiences from the Low German Speaking Mennonite people in Southern Alberta).
The excitement of the upcoming holidays was starting to creep up on me. There was so much to do! From cleaning, to baking and shopping for presents. Not only that, but family would also be coming to visit that we haven’t been able to see in years. The children’s Christmas program at school was next week. They had been practicing and memorizing their lines for the poems and songs they would be performing. Our children will recite their poems and songs for the program but also for the family on Christmas Day. Some of them are the same ones I had learned as a young girl when I lived in Mexico.
As a Low German Mennonite family living in Canada, we celebrate Christmas a bit differently than our Canadian neighbours do, although I’m realizing more and more that our traditions were changing as we adapted bits and pieces that we observed from our neighbours.
We never used to have a Christmas tree that we decorated or put presents underneath. Instead, we would have our kids put out large kitchen bowls on the couches on Christmas Eve and fill them with unwrapped presents for the kids to wake up to the next day. But this last year we did put up a Christmas tree and decorated it. I had wanted to try it, I thought it was so pretty and loved that it stayed up for the whole month of December. Instead of just putting presents into the bowl, my husband and I now wrap some of the larger gifts for our kids and put them under the tree. We still also have our kids put of the kitchen bowls and fill them with chocolate, peanuts and oranges, the same treats as when I was a young child. We would attend the Christmas Day church service in the morning and spend the rest of the day at home, just as we had all the other years previous.
The mixing of my Low German Mennonite culture and the Canadian
culture was a beautiful thing, and yet we’ve still be able to hold on to the traditions I grew up with and have now passed down to my family.
I used to worry - as I know my mom did - that we would lose our cultural identity and traditions when moving to Canada. Changing our Christmas tradition was just one example, and there are many more that I can think of. The mixing of cultures to some degree is inevitable. I think of the Mexican influence in the cooking my mom taught me, as she was influenced by the Mexican culture surrounding her. Though we’ve changed and adapted our traditions and culture, this has only enriched our identity instead of losing it.