Traditions + Culture

The following is a guest post by Adriana Villalobos and is part of the Your Bicultural Holiday Traditions series. We are a bilingual and bicultural family.  I am a “gringa” born and raised in the mid-west to English-speaking parents.  I fell in love with the Spanish language and Hispanic culture while studying in Mexico and Spain during college.  Years later I even became a high school Spanish teacher.  Five years ago I married my wonderful Mexican-American husband.  He was theRead More ...

The following is a guest post from Melissa and is part of Your Bicultural Holiday Traditions series. Alegre vengo de la montaña de mi cabaña que alegre está y a mis amigos les traigo flores de las mejores de mi rosal. Y a mis amigos les traigo flores de las mejores de mi rosal. This song plays in loop in my head all Christmas season long. I learned it in third grade and it takes me back to a veryRead More ...

The following is a guest post by Señora López and is part of the Your Bicultural Holiday Traditions series. Keeping traditions alive in the Familia López poses a unique challenge. I am an Anglo-American, born and raised in the United States with both my father’s Jewish traditions and my mother’s Protestant ones. My husband is Latino, raised in a muy Católico household in El Salvador. As a result, our niños play dreidel on Hanukkah, sing Las Mañanitas to the VirginRead More ...

One of the most exciting parts of keeping up with SpanglishBaby is “meeting” so many other parents and educators who share our passion of raising bilingual and bicultural children.  In the 10 months since we launched, we’ve felt part of a constantly growing community of bloggers who are lovingly sharing their bicultural families’ life stories.  We’ve reached out to seven of these mamás blogueras (we DO promise to find papás for the next one!) to leave a piece of theirRead More ...

For some reason I can’t even explain, I’ve always said Thanksgiving is not a holiday I feel connected to…until now. You see, even though I’ve never hosted a Thanksgiving feast, I’ve always attended one. It’s usually over at my sister’s who loves to entertain and always has the best and most delicious concoctions for any feast. This year, however, she’s not around and for the past couple of weeks, I’ve had this strange feeling, a kind of empty feeling everyRead More ...

For weeks now, most have been getting ready for Halloween with costumes, decorations, pumpkin patches and carvings and all-around spookiness.  I’ve never been a big Halloween celebrator, but I’m obviously getting into it now that my girl can have fun with it.  Which is really what this holiday is for-just having fun, getting great pictures and over-dosing on all sorts of sweets. In our bicultural home we also have a fondness for Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead),Read More ...

One of the biggest disagreements my mother and I have had over the years is the amount – or lack thereof – of makeup I wear. Whenever she sees me getting ready to go out – no importa donde – her comment is always the same: “Hijita, ¿no te vas a maquillar un poquito?” Thing is, I have put makeup on, just not tons of it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t like making myself up, butRead More ...

One of the things that I love the most about the fact that mi mamá lives so close to us–besides the obvious–is that she’s always teaching my daughter, Vanessa, songs and stories from my childhood that I don’t even remember. These help her enrich her vocabulary without making it a task, but it also reinforces our cultural heritage, an area in which I feel like I always need help. When she was a baby, it was my mom who startedRead More ...