It's a Dutch thing

Sometimes in life your culture comes up and smacks you in the face. You don't even realize that you do things differently until someone points it out. Today was a day like that. We'd been invited to celebrate friends' birthdays, a mother and daughter. As we entered the house, we brought flowers and said our happy birthdays to the respective birthday girls. And then we offered our congratulations to the parents of each each birthday girl.

Confused yet?

In the Dutch culture, you congratulate the mother of the birthday person. So you would say, "Congratulations on your son/daughter's birthday." Folks who are not Dutch think this is very strange...why would you congratulate the mother of the birthday person? But when you think about it, why wouldn't you? She was the one who brought you into the world, amongst much pain and labour. The birthday person was just there for the ride.

The good thing was that this was a Dutch family, though second and third generation...but there is a kinship when you uphold these little pieces of your culture and teach them to your kids. I kinda like it.

And as the Dutch say, 'If you ain't Dutch, you ain't much!'