On Halloween, TCK & Cultural (Con)Fusion

Halloween is on its way. I’ve been preparing my daughter’s Princess costume since summer. Bought all kinds of cute accessories for it. She is going to be the star of the Halloween show, I had decided.

Then yesterday she announced that for Halloween, she was going to be a dog.

A dog.

Fine. I can handle that. I can handle anything. I do not get stressed over this. Not at all. I’ll just go over to Bourj Hammoud this afternoon and look for furry material to sew a dog suit. Great. Wonderful. When’s Halloween again? Next week? No problemo. (where’s the Prozac?)

And to think of it all; We don’t even celebrate Halloween in Holland. What am I saying? We do not celebrate Halloween in Lebanon either. Hubbie and I never ever in our entire lives went 'trick 'r treating'. And we do not live in the States either.

TCK: A Dutch girl, eating a Lebanese 'manakoushi ("zaatar only, please") while posing for the American Halloween pumpkins.

This Halloween bit comes from the school environment. When you follow an American curriculum (In Lebanon you can choose between a Lebanese curriculum, an American one, a French one and there’s even a German one!) you’ve got to throw in the American tradition bit. And so we celebrate Halloween. Not the whole Halloween, I might add. Just the dressing up. Not the ‘trick or treating’ bit, because nobody in this neighborhood would know what to do with scary dressed up kids ringing the doorbell at night asking for candy.

I wonder what my kids will make of all this later in life. What kind of traditions will they pass on? There’s the Lebanese culture, although slightly filtered into ‘Lebanese Lite’ (we’ve cancelled all the difficult and demanding stuff, like visiting relatives on feasts and such). There’s quite a bit of Dutch influx (dominant mother in the house), some American, and a little bit of French from the sister-in-law. They’ve had some Sri Lankan exposure too, although nowadays it’s Tagalo (from the Philipino housekeeper) that plays the upper hand.

I know multi-culturalism is supposed to be enriching, but I think this must be pretty confusing too. The lack of an own cultural identify may lead to religious fundamentalism, I read somewhere. I don’t hope so.

My kids are what you call TCK’s, or Third Culture Kids. These are children that are from one culture, and grow up (for some time, at least) in another culture, and form their own integrated culture, which is the ‘third culture’, hence the name Third Culture Kids (TCK).

According to sociologist Ruth Hill Useem, who coined the term TCK in the sixties, TCKs have more in common with each other, regardless of nationality, than they do with non-TCK' span. (Source)

There’s a lot of those in Lebanon. When I think of my son and his friends, they’re not even Third Culture Kids anymore, they’re Fifth or Sixth Culture Kids. Their Dad is from Lebanon, Mom from somewhere else, they were born in the States, lived in Saudi Arabia for a while, and the school, society and home environment adds another mixture of culture(s) to it. When you think about the Lebanese situation, it seems the entire country is Third Culture.

All of this of course, does not change the fact that this week I’ve got to come up with a dog suit. And I’m not stressed out. Not at all. I’ll make it extra big. So she can wear it again next year. But maybe next year she wants to dress up as a princess.

It’s all the fault of the Americans, you know. Halloween! Tfeh!