Culture of my Home

Culture of my Home

If you have not read the About section of this blog, I am a Singaporean who is ethnically Chinese, and my wife is a Filipino who is - unsurprisingly - ethnically Filipino.

This means that our daughter - and any future children - is ethnically mixed, Chinese and Filipino. And this brought up an interesting conversation at work; an intern who is himself mixed asked what my daughter would identify as, culturally. Would she think of herself as Chinese, or as Filipino? And would that affect the way she relates to friends and family?

My cultural identity

Perhaps this goes back to the topic on identity. What do I identify myself as? Chinese? Singaporean?

I could say I identify as ethnically Chinese, and culturally Singaporean. In truth, I am not very bound to my identity as an ethnic Chinese - I speak the language poorly, and I don’t buy into most of the traditions or any of the religions - so I suppose it is more accurate to call me Singaporean.

But then I don’t find myself particularly patriotic. I appreciate the Singaporean government and their good work in raising Singapore up to where we are now, but I am just as critical of them as the least patriotic person I have met.

In truth, I think I identify most as a Christian. Sure, there are some cultural elements in the mix of my identity, but the values I live by and principles that I practice are all based in my Christian faith.

I realize that not every person has the freedom to practice what they believe, or even to grow up in families that pass on these beliefs and traditions instead of enforcing their own cultural ones. My wife and I are incredibly fortunate to have come from families where the Christian faith was the standard of our house, and in fact our journey in Christian discipleship come from the same roots as well.

The culture of my home

So for my wife and I, the culture of our home is really not strongly tied to our ethnicity. We do have certain cultural practices and traditions that we have decided to keep, but for the most part we do not really identify strongly as Chinese or Filipino or Singaporean.

Instead, the culture of our home is Christian. Our traditions include the reading of the Bible and praying as a family and giving money to causes that we believe support the advancement of God’s Kingdom. Our values are love and honesty and forgiveness and so on.

And this is what we will teach our children, much as our parents have taught us. Not a culture divided by race or geography or income or age, but a culture united by faith. And hopefully, they will learn this culture and pass it on to their children too.