We've been doing a lot of reading on raising an Ethiopian child and being a multi-racial family in books such as "I'm Chocolate You're Vanilla" and "Is That Child Yours?" Although extremely important, today we began thinking about the cultural norms/traditions that we were raised with that we plan on sharing with our child. Things that are not at all Ethiopian, things that are so rooted in American tradition that most New Yorkers would never admit to partaking...
Enter American Football!
Both my husband and I were raised as tried-and-true Minnesota Vikings fans. The importance of this didn't really hit home until we moved away from our family in Minnesota and began our life in New York. All of a sudden missing THE Vikings game on Sunday was something that would only happen if one of us was traveling (and even then we would seek out a venue with NFL Sunday Ticket) or some other catastrophic event had happened that prevented us from being within satellite distance from the game. It became our guaranteed weekly connection to our family in the Mid-West. This year we gave my father 6 very coveted tickets to the Vikings vs Packers game and will be traveling to MN to join dad, my sisters, and brother-in-law to go to the game together. My dad tends to root for the Packers as often as the Vikings, but that's one of those topics we've learned not to bring up at the dinner table.
We're so excited to introduce our child to Ethiopian food, traditions, music, politics, history, etc... However, we also can't wait to wake up on the first Sunday morning during football season and dress our child in his/her first Vikings getup. Our child will look great sporting the purple and gold!
No comments:
Post a Comment