|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Wed Jun 28, 2006 1:01 pm
"Never forget where you came from; never forget where you got your name from" ~from the Navi item for Gaia houses
Family roots are something peolpe often want to forget, or put behind them, and the more they lose their roots, the less they become the people they want to be. And people in the media often associate people with their family members, and their actions; claiming that they're just like them, even if they're not.
What I want to know is:
What do you think of people who honor their roots, and what would you think of your own? Do we grow into what our family history dictates, or do we choose our path? And do you have any family traditions you maintain?
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jun 28, 2006 7:40 pm
To honor one's roots and family history is one thing, but people who make that critical to their lives, to me, hold themselves back, which is a weakness to me.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2006 3:04 am
On the flip side, I'm very much riddled with family and social traditions from what probably seems Victorian England. For example the subject of child discipline, or even right down to the 'No talking at the Dinner Table' rule.
I don't try and make any illusions - I am indeed much like my father, and I don't think that it is a weakness as such. While it may make me 'old style', it honestly does not bother me. Being something of a traditionalist is one of the few things I have in common with my old man.
As for growing into something the family dictates, I don't believe so. I'm the first person in my entire family tree to go to University, and i'm also the first person in said family to take any interest in the medical field. My father is a truck driver and my mother is an accountant - I do not drive, and am fairly bad with Mathematics over a certain level.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2006 4:26 pm
I don't like my family. Or my roots. Therefore, I don't honour them.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2006 5:32 pm
MY family is a very ignorant religion controled over-controling group...I want my children to have a better chance at happiness then I had.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2006 9:45 pm
My family is rather affectionate and open and I've become that way. The hardest part about it all is that I had to learn when to show affection and when to hold it back, but I've learned. My family has basically taught me to accept others for who they are, not what they wear or what they look like. I'm proud of my heritage, even though I'm mainly European and by and large the Europeans have been HUGEASS BITCHES to everyone, still. I'm prideful and stubborn like a large part of my heritage and genial and friendly like a smaller part.
Scandinavian+Scottish+A dash of Italian=ME! Wewt.
YAAAY.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2006 7:49 pm
I had a very disfunctional family, and I think that experiencing that has made me more flexible when dealing with different types of people. Naturally, there are some traditions that I will keep, and others that I will do away with.
My grandmother on my father's side only knew one word in English, which was "c**t". The only languace spoken in her house was Gaelic, and I spent most of my very early childhood there so English was my second language. I talk funny because of it. She had the theory that if you couldn't behave at the dinner table, you didn't belong there. If you misbehaved, then she would make you sit and eat your dinner on the floor in the kitchen. This sort of discipline I really like, as it differs from the "bed without dinner" in that the child in question still gets their food, but also missing the fun talking and jokes at the table makes a kid want to be included.
My family has always had live trees at christmas, which I like- they're so much prettier. I'm keeping that one, though they're a bit messier than the false trees and you have to water them.
Every evening after dinner, we, as a family, went for a walk. My parents have a house with 40 acres. The house ist one end, and the pond is an acre or so away. We'd take a frisbee, or a baseball or something, walk to the lake, play around for about an hour, then go back to the house, adn get ready for bed.
Before bed, my mom used to read us all a chapter or two from a random book. One of us would pick out a book, and once mom finished reading it, the next kid got to pick a new book for her to read from, and so on.
Things that I didn't like so much:
When we did something we weren't supposed to do, dad made us run laps around the house. He would add or subtract laps based on how serious the transgression, and whether or not we had tried to lie about it. This may seem fair, but my brothers would always get away with blaming things on me...so I ended up doing the most running.
Everyone in my family puts relish in potato salad. I hate relish in potato salad. They want to put olives on devilled eggs, and I hate olives.
My parents had a strict rule that you eat everything on your plate before you leave the table. The thing is, they would load the plates, and sometimes, I just wasn't able to eat everything they piled on there. I'd have to sit there till I finally did eat it all.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2006 3:10 pm
My fiance & I are honouring our families at our wedding... his family is almost entirely Scottish, while I come from a background of Hungarian (25%), Irish (6.25%), Italian (6.25%) & the rest is presumably English/convict descent (yay!). Hungarian being the major one & the one I was exposed to most growing up, so our wedding is going to be Hungarian/Scottish themed (with a bit of fairytale princess thrown in for good measure blaugh ).
My dress will have my family's flower pattern (what Hungarian families have instead of a coat of arms) embroidered on it, my fiance will be decked out in his family kilt (of course).
The theme colours will be based on the main colours of his family plaid & my family's flower pattern. Rather than marking the tables with numbers, we will be naming each of them after a castle in either Scotland or Hungary (if we run out of castles, we'll probably just start using other famous places in Hungary/Scotland).
And so on...
Day-to-day I don't pay too much heed to my family history (other than occassionally wearing a shawl with my family's flower pattern on it... which I currently don't know where it is! *Fretfretfret*).
Rob's life doesn't revolve around his family history, but he does embrace it... his motto (a Scottish saying) is tattooed onto his arm in Runic, along with a Thistle & on very special occassions (major birthdays, etc) he wears a kilt.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 9:36 am
Roots are easier to maintain and honor if they're good... If your family's full of losers and sociopaths, you're better off without them.
It's all a matter of what's good for you...
Although interestingly, in societies with frequent food shortages, people have much more developed and extensive kin-networks than in societies without. Food for thougth, as it were.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 9:43 am
JewelsSparkle My fiance & I are honouring our families at our wedding... his family is almost entirely Scottish, while I come from a background of Hungarian (25%), Irish (6.25%), Italian (6.25%) & the rest is presumably English/convict descent (yay!). Hungarian being the major one & the one I was exposed to most growing up, so our wedding is going to be Hungarian/Scottish themed (with a bit of fairytale princess thrown in for good measure blaugh ).
My dress will have my family's flower pattern (what Hungarian families have instead of a coat of arms) embroidered on it, my fiance will be decked out in his family kilt (of course).
The theme colours will be based on the main colours of his family plaid & my family's flower pattern. Rather than marking the tables with numbers, we will be naming each of them after a castle in either Scotland or Hungary (if we run out of castles, we'll probably just start using other famous places in Hungary/Scotland).
And so on...
Day-to-day I don't pay too much heed to my family history (other than occassionally wearing a shawl with my family's flower pattern on it... which I currently don't know where it is! *Fretfretfret*).
Rob's life doesn't revolve around his family history, but he does embrace it... his motto (a Scottish saying) is tattooed onto his arm in Runic, along with a Thistle & on very special occassions (major birthdays, etc) he wears a kilt. As a person of Scottish background, I would be rather reluctant to go honoring the lords and nobles of Scotland at my wedding by giving their homes a place at my table... Those castles were built with the blood and tears of the Scottish people... the nobles who live in them got rich by by expelling my ancestors from the land they'd farmed for generations. It was a time of great suffering and hardship for the Scottish people, whose wasted lives became fuel for the industrial revolution in the slums of Glasgow... Which isn't even to get into the kilt, which in its modern form was basically invented by the English, who wanted a way to play dress up like the fierce highland warriors who'd recently been kicked out of their homes and reduced to poverty... Much in the way of 'national character' (family tartans, coats of arms, national costumes, traditional songs, etc.) was invented in the mid to late 1800s, (anthropologists like to think up unnecessary words for things, and so refer to this process as 'ethnogenesis,') because it was during that timeframe that modern 'nations' as such emerged throughout most of Europe.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reply
