Mixed-Race Families And Couples, I Want To Know How You've Blended Your Cultures And Traditions Together
Hi, I'm Victoria, and I'm Greek and Korean. It's nice to meet ya! As someone who's mixed, I'm curious to know how you and your family or you and your partner have blended cultures and traditions over the years.
That's me with both sets of grandparents. My grandfathers famously got along.
I'll start. My dad is Greek Orthodox; my mom grew up without religion. (Now, if you've seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding, you know where this is going.) Since my dad preferred to be married in a church, my mom got baptized so they could have a Greek Orthodox wedding ceremony.
Yeah, my mom really resonated with Ian Miller. She actually preferred an outdoor ceremony. But since she wasn't religious and knew it was important to my dad, she was cool with the church ceremony.
However, during part of their reception, my parents both wore traditional Korean hanboks. And though they originally booked a DJ for their reception — a friend of my dad's who happened to be Greek — they also booked a Korean band (admittedly at the behest of my maternal grandfather, who wanted to see some Korean rep).
My parents actually really liked the band my grandfather found and had them and the DJ take turns performing. From their wedding video, I can tell the guests really liked them all, too (LOL).
When it came time to raise me and my sister, they played it by ear. Greek naming tradition dictates naming your first son or daughter after their paternal grandfather or grandmother, respectively. (The second is to be named after their maternal grandparent, and so on.) Neither of my parents cared to follow that, so they tweaked the tradition and used my paternal grandmother's name as my middle name.
Accordingly, my younger sister's middle name is my maternal grandmother's name. My maternal grandmother also gave me and my sister Korean names (though they're not on paper anywhere).
I like my full name and don't think too deeply about it (other than when I have to write out all 27 letters on legal docs — Greek names, amiright?), but I do think it's cool that my sister's name reflects both Korean and Greek cultures.
Similarly, my sister and I were baptized in the Greek Orthodox Church. I had a Baek-il (a Korean 100th-day celebration); she didn't. We'd celebrate Orthodox Easter with only my dad's side since my mom's parents are not religious, and my parents would host (a gigantic) Christmas at our house with a massive, rotating menu that both sides attended every year.
Fun fact: In Greek Orthodox tradition, children are typically gifted an Easter Candle (to carry at midnight mass) from their godparents. My godmother is my mom's younger sister. She's Korean and agnostic, but she'd come with us to church every year when I was a kid (and she saved my hair and elbow from getting burnt a few times, IYKYK).
After we moved, she no longer joined us, but one of my dad's sisters began making me a candle when she'd make them for her godchildren (my cousins). TBH, I was probably too old to be gifted a candle by that point, and I'm the oldest grandkid, so it wouldn't have been weird to be the only one without a candle. However, I'm also the only one with a non-Greek godmother, so I especially appreciated that it didn't seem like something that just slipped through the cultural cracks.
More casually, we regularly ate Greek and Korean food. My maternal grandmother would make me and my sister kimbap nearly every day after school. My paternal grandmother bakes koulouria every time my sister and I come over — enough to give us a giant Ziploc baggie full of 'em to go, too.
