Cultural Traditions and Body Parts

One of my students from Japan became a new father this year.  During a class, he showed me the small wooden box that Japanese parents use to save a newborn baby’s umbilical cord once it falls off of the baby’s stomach.  I had heard of the tradition before but told him that Americans didn’t do that; in fact, most Americans would think it strange--or even unpleasant--because it was a dried, blackened piece of skin.

Of course, these kinds of customs are not necessarily logical; they are traditional.  Take, for instance, the U.S. tradition of the tooth fairy: when American children lose a tooth, they put it under their pillow and wake up to find it replaced by money, supposedly left by the fairy who buys up deciduous teeth.  The Japanese, on the other hand, take a lost tooth and throw it away.  If it comes from the lower mouth, they will throw it up onto the rooftop; an upper tooth is thrown underneath the house—with no reward for the child, either up or down.

These traditions reminded me that my parents saved a lock of hair from my first haircut in a plastic bag inside my baby book of memorabilia.  (We did not continue this custom for our children, and I am unaware if other families do this today.)  Why do Americans save such items?  Perhaps it is our preoccupation of celebrating “firsts” in a person’s life.

At the other end of life, Americans who cremate their relatives after death will sometimes store the ashes (called “cremains”) in a special container in their house.  My wife has saved the cremains of all her past pets in small engraved boxes; she has instructed us to place the boxes in her casket so she can be buried with all her beloved dogs’ ashes.

Cremation urns come in many shapes, colors, and materials, including metal, ceramic, and wood. They may be displayed or kept in a private pace in the home. Some urns are also buried or placed in a mausoleum.

Does your culture have special traditions with regard to body parts? Share them with me, along with the explanations of those traditions.  I’ll post them in a future blog for all our readers.

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Note on other body parts: In the past, Americans have believed that a rabbit’s foot was a good-luck charm. People would buy the severed paw of a rabbit and attach it to their keychains for good luck. The paws were dried, and the fur was often dyed in bright colors. This association of good luck comes from the African-American tradition of hoodoo.  (As many will point out, the rabbit who gave up his paw was not lucky at all!)

On Identity & Belonging: My Franco-Finnish Family's Story

Gilles and Annika Bourgogne: One couple, two cultures

On Identity and Belonging: My Franco-Finnish Family’s Story 

Guest post by Annika Bourgogne

This month it has been 20 years since my husband left his native France. Little did he know, at the tender age of 21, that his 12 months of studying abroad would turn into two decades and a family life there. Or that he would become very attached and integrated into his new homeland even if he naturally missed his native country and, despite the years passing, held tightly onto his cultural identity as a Frenchman.

Gilles arrived in Finland shortly before France started nuclear testing in the South Pacific in the nineties. A lot of the anger and resentment against France was directed towards the French students, and his first years abroad were not always easy. He felt that learning the local language and adjusting as much as possible to the way of life of his host country were the best ways to show people that he wasn’t just an outsider, but respected the new culture and wanted to integrate. He took language classes to perfect his Finnish skills, paid taxes, and went about his life like almost any other man his age in this country. At his bachelor party, he wore a blond wig and underwent a mock christening to become a “real Finn.” It took us until our children were born to realize that the acceptance of my husband in his new homeland did not have to happen at the expense of losing the culture he grew up with.

With the birth of our oldest daughter, we needed to rethink the cultural identity of our family. We finally accepted that we were not like most families in our neighborhood; we were a bicultural  family, and after all the years of trying to erase that difference, we were ready to embrace it and pass on to baby Emma all of her cultural heritage.

Since then, for the past 13 years, we have been performing a balancing act with our two cultures. Often this has meant reinforcing the one that is less present in the everyday life while at the same time taking special care to not undermine the culture of their birth country. To do this, we have helped our children become bilingual, celebrated the traditions of both countries, and spent summers in France to help them identify as a part of their French family, too. And the most important, if you ask their dad: we have taught them to cheer for Finland in ice hockey and for France in soccer. It could have, of course, been the other way round too, but frankly, the odds of winning would not have been as high!

The occasional struggles (and feelings of having two personalities!) come from the fact that in both cultures there are inevitably some aspects that you like and some that you don’t. The good news is that we as a family can often take the best from both worlds. As a Finn, I am very attached to many things in Finland, but there are many aspects of French culture that I couldn’t imagine life without. And no, I’m not only talking about wine. There's also cheese. And, joking aside, there’s wonderful literature, music, and lovely family dinners with great conversation that lasts for hours, to name just a few.

As a teacher, I often meet immigrant students and families who seem to believe that in order to integrate they need to leave their own cultural and linguistic heritage behind in favor of that of their host country. In the process, however, they are depriving their children of their heritage language, the culture, and perhaps even a natural relationship with a parent who may speak only rudimentary Finnish. I therefore try to encourage my immigrant students to speak and read in their first language and value their birth culture and traditions. Even if they now also belong to a new culture, it should never have to be just one or the other. Retaining one's own heritage while embracing the culture of the host country is not only for their own benefit; the whole host nation gains something from the diversity. Over the years my husband has learned to operate as a bridge between his two cultures and shown our children a great example of embracing both.

 “So, you're half Finnish and half French?” my daughter was asked at a sports event where she had painted a French flag and a Finnish flag on her face.  “No,” she shot back. “I'm Finnish AND French.” And there's nothing “half” about that.

Emma and Sara Bourgogne: One family embracing two cultures, two languages

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Annika Bourgogne is a language teacher and the author of Be Bilingual - Practical Ideas of Multilingual Families. She lives in Helsinki, Finland with her French husband and two bilingual daughters.  You can access her book here, where she blogs on topics of language, culture, and identity: http://www.be-bilingual.net.

Judging Others

The human response of seeing the same behavior in very different ways.

With billions of people on this earth, there are countless behaviors going on every day. When people behave in a certain way, those around them will make judgments: “That’s good…That’s appropriate…That’s normal.” Or: “That’s strange…That’s rude…That’s bad.” Among the people around us, we usually agree on what’s appropriate and what’s inappropriate. However, if we enter a circle that is unlike our “home” circle, people’s judgments on appropriate vs. inappropriate will differ. This blog outlines those differences.

Throughout the world, we can all agree on some behaviors as necessary and appropriate. Eating is normal. All humans eat to survive. Ditto with breathing, learning, and sleeping. When a behavior is shared among all people, we call it Universal. As human beings, we have these behaviors in common.

Within a certain group, specific rules take hold. While eating is universal, the manner of eating is not. Some people eat with chopsticks, others with forks, or others with the hands. When the rules vary from one group to another, we call those behaviors Cultural. Slurping soup, for example, is considered appropriate in China. (The “logic” is that the soup is hot or the noodles are slippery.) In the U.S., slurping of any food is considered rude. (The “logic” is that the noise disturbs the serenity of fellow diners.) Styles of eating are not universal.

Finally, there is a kind of behavior that has no seeming reason to it. When it happens, all people around the behavior judge it as strange or idiosyncratic. So, we must realize that some people behave outside the boundaries of the group rules. We call this behavior Personal.

From this, we can create a framework for behavior in which to analyze actions we observe in the world:

<———— U ——————— C ———————- P ————>
Universal behavior….Cultural behavior….Personal behavior
Everyone does it. …..One group does it. ..One person does it.

The dangers of ethnocentrism. When we make judgments about other people’s behavior under the assumption that our rules or values are the logical, the best, or the only rules to apply, we are being ethnocentric. Ethnocentrism comes from Greek words ethno (ethnic group, tribe, cultural identity) + centrism (being at the center), in other words, evaluating other peoples from the standards of one’s own culture. Basically, it’s seeing the world as if our group is at the center of it all. This is an intrinsically human flaw, something we all do.

The danger of having ethnocentric views and judgments is that outside of our narrow group (our region, our dialect, our social class, our religion, our race, our education, our sexual identity), other rules of being and behavior apply. Within those other groups, members are busy obeying other rules. And this makes it tricky to cross cultures. In terms of the chart above, we start to think that our C should be everyone’s U, and we make judgments that get us into trouble.

Questions to ask in a cross-cultural encounter. So, what should you do when you sense that this Other Person you’re talking to is not behaving by The Rules? You need to do a quick self-check before leveling further judgment (and getting yourself upset). Ask yourself these questions:
1. What are my own fears, preferences, and biases?
2. Is the behavior I’m struggling with Personal, Cultural, or Universal?
3. Could my language sound ethnocentric to the other person?
4. Finally, am I trying to solve a problem, or am I trying to be “right”?

And for a light-hearted perspective, let me share a cartoon from the famous American humorist, Gary Larson. He reminds us that even when almost everyone within one culture agrees (C ), some difficult person is going to break the rules and do something his own way (P). Some people, we can all agree, are just jerks.