National Roots Day 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦🌳

Family comes first, and the Christmas season is the ideal time for a traditional holiday like Roots Day, illustrating the significance of family, especially during these times. The festive season is the one time of year in which the whole family comes together, so it is only fitting that ancestral heritage is celebrated during this period. Although the exact origin of this day is unknown, Roots Day has been around for more than 40 years. The United States of America has welcomed immigrants from all over the world. These settlers changed their names and adopted the local cuisine and customs, just like any other blue-blooded American. Such is the diversity, that the nation has been referred to as a melting pot of cultural assimilation. But as multiculturalism is becoming more and more widespread, we’ll naturally have an interest in our past. As we learn about our family heritage, we often understand our parents and grandparents better, and even ourselves. National Roots Day celebrates this impulse to dig deeper into our ancestry. On this day, memories are shared and assembled for a better understanding of our predecessors and their lives. Before these memories fade and the details start to get fuzzy, it is better to have them assembled and linked. The participation of every generation is encouraged in discovering the struggles and accomplishments of our families’ lineages. Stories of each generation whose efforts, successes, and failures have all contributed to shaping us as a person should be documented.