Thanksgiving is almost here. Right after that, the Christmas season is in full swing. From December 1st until New Year’s, everywhere I look will be evergreen trees, holly, gift wrap, twinkle lights, snowmen, and traditions.
My children will begin begging to decorate the second the last piece of turkey is tucked away in a container for leftovers and will insist on keeping them up longer than I feel comfortable.
If it sounds a little like I’m dreading it, well, I am. I love the idea of Christmas. I’m a Christian and I love the idea of God taking the form of a tiny baby and the world being in awe. But that isn’t really what our culture celebrates. It might be in the roots, but it’s not the point anymore.
Even some religious families tend to be more concerned about gifts than other things. Or, if they aren’t, they are so skewed the other direction they are condemning everyone who cares about gifts at all.
However, when my anxiety hits, I find myself not feeling particularly festive. Don’t get me wrong, there are things I’m looking forward to. I love watching my people receive gifts. I love the handmade cards they give me and the conspiratorial giggles when they go out with my husband to buy me a gift. I like the decorations we have. Almost all of them are attached to a meaning or memory.
We have cinnamon ornaments we made the first Christmas our kids came to us through foster care. There is a salt dough ornament with my youngest’s handprint in it that is so tiny and precious to me I cry whenever I see it. We have two nativities, one porcelain that we collected a new piece to every year until we had all of them, and a second soft one the kids could play with. Our soft nativity was gifted to us by a friend when she was stationed in Germany with her family and it is hand-stitched by local artisans. Our tree topper is a stuffed reindeer named Sparkles that we got our first Christmas together as a married couple. It was a silly thing that ended up being one of our traditions.
When we started as foster parents we tried to incorporate our kids’ traditions into what we did. Unfortunately, they didn’t really have any that meant anything to them so we ended up making some of our own. We eat at a Chinese buffet every Christmas day like in The Christmas Story. We started that tradition when it was just my husband and I and we didn’t want to join our respective families for dinner. We kept it up because we thought it would be good to have traditions to keep for our kids.
There are adoptive families who have adopted children from other cultures that integrate their child’s cultural elements into their holiday celebrations. I had expected to do the same should we adopt again. I think it’s very important that if you’re an adoptive family and you’ve adopted outside your culture it is imperative to learn as much as you can about the culture your child is from.
Even if things feel strange to you, do your best to learn. Your child is the person with the least control in the adoption triad and the one most likely to feel othered by family. It is key to include their culture in the things you need to understand about them as a parent. It doesn’t make them any less yours if you demonstrate to them that their culture is significant and a part of who they are. You cannot and should not try to erase who they are. You might wish to erase all the trauma they’ve been through but you can’t. And pretending none of it happened is a disservice to everyone.
As you get your home ready for whatever holidays you’re going to celebrate, make sure to include your child’s culture in it. And if you don’t know how, now is a good time to go to the library or search the internet to figure out how.
