My DD was born in Guatemala. We do try to blend traditions. I feel like it is important to continue the family traditions you have and to add to them. I know some families who have kind of walk away from their own traditions to ONLY embrace the child's birth countries tradition. To me, unless you were planning on moving to the birth country, you are doing a disservice to your child. I think the goal should be to embrace it but you still should embrace YOUR birth countries/birth families traditions. Does that make sense?
Anyway... example of what we do are...
1. In Guatemala on Christmas Eve you have tamales. So I try to make (or at least eat) tamales.
2. On birthdays we have a pinata
3. We celebrate Carnivale (which is a Guatemalan holiday)
4. We celebrate our Family day. Which is tha day we forever became a family. On that day we talk about our time in Guatemala (we were lucky enough to go there twice), we look at pictures from our trips, we usually eat traditional Guatemalan food.
5. With all of our Christmas decorations we have some that are Guatemalan
6. This year for the Day of the Dead (a BIG HOLIDAY in Guatemala) we read books about it and actually watched a Handy Manny episode on it. Next year we will fly kites which is the traditions.
For the holidays that are the American one(4th of July or Thanksgiving) we don't do anything that is really Guatemalan because it's not a Guatemalan holiday. Ok thats my 2 cents....ok more like a half dollar, but there you have it! hehe
Maura
