TCKs and Holidays
The holiday season is in full swing over here in America. So naturally, I’ve been thinking about how my Third Culture Kid upbringing has influenced my experiences, feelings, and traditions during the holidays!
Have you ever thought about how your cultural upbringing influences how you celebrate holidays? Which holidays do you celebrate? What traditions and customs do you adhere to? What makes you feel happy this time of year? What makes you feel sad or lonely? What else do you notice?
For TCKs, one of the cool things about growing up outside of your passport country, is that you get to learn about holidays and celebratory traditions from around the world! Because I was born into a Christian Italian American household, I grew up celebrating things like Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, and St. Joseph’s Day. But when I moved to Uganda as a child I got to add more holidays to my calendar like Ugandan Independence Day and International Women’s Day. Twice the countries means twice the holidays!
TCKs also get to learn how people in other places celebrate the holidays that they might have in common. For example, in America, Christmas is often celebrated with holiday decorations, baked goods, cold weather activities, and all manner of Christmas-themed media. Where I lived in Uganda, Christmas is celebrated by dressing up and going to the village dance and eating a feast of delicious Ugandan food. The focus is on hospitality and community. Therefore, Christmases in our family were a general mish-mash of different cultures and traditions: our Italian heritage contributed the homemade ravioli on Christmas eve, our American upbringing contributed the fake Christmas tree in the living room and the presents stuffed into stockings, and our Ugandan community contributed the social events of the day - visiting friends, going to the dances, partaking of the delicious feasts.
The best case scenario of living amongst many countries and cultures is that you get to create a mish-mash of all the best things. But that is not always possible. One of the lonely things about holidays as a TCK is that sometimes they are not spent with the people or places or traditions that are dear to you. As a child I never spent holidays with extended family, or friends from America. (I even think I missed snow on particularly hot dry seasons.) When my siblings went off to college, their absence was felt deeply. When I went to college, I often spent holiday breaks with my friends and their families, and missed my own family and our unique ways to celebrate together. When the people you love are spread around the world, but you can only be in one place, someone will always be missing. And you just have to learn to live with those holes in your heart as best you can.
And then there is the loneliness of celebrating the traditions themselves when they are of people and places that you love but cannot be with. Celebrating Ugandan traditions brings me joy and sadness at the same time because I love the thing that I miss and I miss the thing that I love. It feels more “me” to acknowledge the Ugandan part of my story during special occasions. But it can also bring up a certain kind of heartache.
There can also be a cultural loneliness for some TCKs who live in a place where they do not feel connected to the holiday traditions surrounding them. When those in the country around you have traditions that are not only different from yours, but rooted in a shared, monocultural nostalgia, those of us who have lived different lives can feel othered. And this can be further exacerbated when those same people are not open to learning about your cultural traditions. The cultural chameleon part of being a TCK makes us good at finding ways to relate to people around us. But it can feel lonely when the people around us do not want to hear about the things that make us different from them.
And then there’s the weird, complicated stuff. Like accidentally offending people because you don’t know the social expectations of the holidays of where you live. Or people offending you by insinuating that because you grew up celebrating different holidays in different ways, that your childhood is “less than” theirs. Or just not wanting to celebrate a particular holiday.
All this to say, holidays as a TCK can be super cool, and sometimes lonely, and also complicated.
So if there is a TCK in your life and you want to know how to better love them this season, I’d encourage you to be curious and accepting, and remember that their cultural differences are part of why you love them and those differences deserve to be included and celebrated too.
And if you are a TCK, I just want to validate that it’s okay to have all the feelings. It’s ok to be happy and sad at the same time. And I hope you find a way to create your own little mish-mash of holiday celebrations in a way that feels good to you and that you can share with the people that you love.
<3 Maria
