Culture: "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society."

Our culture makes up a huge part of who each of us are individually and collectively. Our families certainly have their own cultures as well. Think about the ways your family celebrates holidays, such as Christmas and birthdays. Maybe you don’t refer to what you do as culture, it can also be known has tradition, maybe a little more common term for the family. For example some of my family’s traditions for birthdays was we don’t have to do any chores that day, on Christmas eve we get to open our present from the sibling who picked our name that year, we listen to a conference talk every morning while we eat breakfast, and my dad takes us on a birthday date every year.. Sometimes you don’t really realize that certain things your family does is because of culture. It is kind of fun to think about. It can also be fun to look back at your family line to see what culture your family originated from and what traits your family has held onto over the years, or even generations.

It is cool to look at different cultures and see the differences of each, and how the individuals are affected because of their culture they live. Asian culture is quite focused on education, Hispanics are huge on family - just to give a couple examples. One of the great things about living in America is everyone who currently lives here, or who ever have, all immigrated here at one point or another in their family line. There is such a huge diversity of culture in America, so we get to see all different kinds. We are surrounded by all these different cultures, but then there is the one we live in, our family culture.

Our family culture is the one that affects us the most. It really shapes who we are and how we will run our families. Culture does have a large effect on us. As we grow up in our family culture then move out on our own and start our own families we get to choose what we want to apply to our own family and what we want to get rid of. This process is not as simple though as it sounds since we will be blending our family culture with our spouse’s to make a “new” family culture. The exciting thing is that this process goes on and on throughout the generations.