Culture Stress & the Holiday Season

Written By Ben Aijian

Greetings friends, from a beautiful South African summer!

It was, as always, a somewhat jarring transition to go from North America, headed into the holidays and winter, to the same holiday season in a context and weather pattern totally the opposite. Rather than the typical cozy sensations that my Northern Hemisphere friends associate with Christmas, in South Africa, the holidays are fully summer barbecue season (or Braai, as it is called here). For South Africans, the holiday still holds many of the same core elements: fellowship, family, slowing things down, and spending time with each other, but it also includes lots of beach days and grilling! It truly is a carnivore’s paradise here in Cape Town.

However, as an expat and foreigner living in this nation, there are elements of the holidays that I have grown up with, from my home culture, that I find myself missing: fireplaces, hot cocoa, cozy blankets, and the crisp cool outside. But these individual things are relatively minor, and I am able to easily adjust because of how much we love it here. They are, however, a good seasonal reminder of a phenomenon few people are familiar with, namely Culture Stress.

Many people are familiar with the idea of Culture Shock. And the two, while related, are not the same and should not be confused with one another. Culture Shock is defined by Webster’s dictionary as “a feeling of confusion felt by someone visiting a country or a place that they do not know.” In my experience, Culture shock is also expressed in degrees. The wider the cultural norms and differences, the more severe the experience of culture shock. Even someone transitioning from the USA to Canada or even one state to another will experience minor degrees of culture shock, and if you have made these transitions, you might do well to consider the unintended impacts those differences are having upon you. But in the case of many cross-cultural workers, the transition from one’s home nation to an entirely foreign context has a massive amount of cultural shift, and the experience of Culture shock is far more severe. Moving from the West to places such as the Middle East or India is often a far more challenging adjustment to make because absolutely everything is different, including basic communication in one’s heart language. But by and large, after a period of adjustment, culture shock fades. The resilience of the human spirit is that we have the ability to adjust and adapt to our new environments. We learn to cope with the differences. It does get easier. However, I'd make an argument that it doesn't become easy.

This is where Culture Stress kicks in. As opposed to Culture Shock, which is experienced for a defined and typically short period of time and adjustment, Culture Stress is with you for the long term. It is an ever-present, lurking reminder that the place you are in is not your home. Culture Stress can be defined as “the mental burden and drain that is imparted by the adding up of little details that a local or native would never have to think about but that are a constant part of an expat or cross-cultural worker’s reality.” For example, in North America, we understand the price of gas intrinsically as high or low based upon our currency and units of measurement. “Oh $6 dollars a gallon? That's outrageous!” No math is required because we just innately know; it's a part of a set of cultural knowledge that natives grow up with. But when transitioning to a place where they measure things differently, suddenly getting gas becomes more mentally challenging. I have to figure out how much petrol (not gas) I want in South African Rand per Litre… There are two mental calculations I have to do in my head if I want to find an equivalent value in dollars per gallon. More often than not, I resign myself to having no idea if gas is expensive or not.

This is one example of a series of multiple such small items that add up. And in aggregate, the weight of these minor things can become very heavy. It begins to drain away one’s resilience, one’s patience. One of the main effects of Culture Stress is an irritability toward one’s host nation and its inhabitants. It is often expressed as “the way they do things here is dumb,” “Gosh, I wish things were more efficient like they were at home,” or “Sometimes South Africa (insert whatever nation you like) drives me crazy.” This weight that burdens us down has the huge potential to sour our moods, cause us to be snappish, and generally make us unpleasant individuals to be around. We have an increasingly “short fuse.” Often this can be incredibly damaging to the work that we are trying to do as we seek to build stronger and better relationships in our host nation.

But herein lies the encouragement. You aren't a jerk. You haven’t become a version of yourself that you barely recognize; you are carrying a heavy burden. It can often be missed or go entirely unnoticed because each individual item is seemingly insignificant. But it adds up. And sometimes the holiday season can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. The feelings of nostalgia, a longing for home, family, weather where I could drink hot cocoa, snow… etc. In South Africa, the idea of a ‘White Christmas’ really is just a dream. But for foreign workers and their families (both those at home and abroad), the holiday seasons carry extra weight that can negatively affect our mental states and drain our resilience. They can even lead or contribute to depression and heightened levels of anxiety.

So what can we do? For those of you that are in a context that you would not consider your home, have grace upon yourself. Take some time today to think through your mental list. What are all of the things that if you were back in X nation, you just wouldn’t need to think about at all? What are the safety concerns, the language concerns, logistical concerns? Are you trying really hard to find a Christmas tree for your kid, knowing full well there isn't a pine tree in the country? Sit with that list, acknowledge the size of it, and cut yourself some slack. It would also be helpful to talk to another individual about how much you are carrying and acknowledge to another human being or God that you are tired. As for encouragement, ask for creative imagination on how you can build new, local contextual, holiday traditions that stand in the void created by the absence of what you knew in your childhood.

For those of you who have the privilege and joy of being in your home context but who know individuals or families that are not, please reach out. Take the initiative. Ask them how they are doing. Let them know you are thinking about them, and make it more than pleasantry. The sense of isolation can be real, and our commitment to social propriety will cause everyone to have a ‘first round’ of “Everything's great, thanks for asking.” If you have the capacity or motivation, maybe consider a holiday care package with goodies associated with the Christmas season. Yes, shipping it would be astronomically expensive, but even that in and of itself would communicate a love and a value that goes beyond words. (And if you're reading this today and decide to ship something today, it may very well arrive in May of next year…) But maybe next year you might anticipate that your loved one and friend far from home could use some encouragement during the holiday season, and you send your care package with gifts and stocking stuffers in September. Even if you don't have the means to do something large and grand; small gestures, like the small elements of Culture Stress, add up. They make a noticeable difference. Perhaps you might commit to doing an Advent Calendar encouragement, where you send some encouraging note each day during the month of December. Be creative; it's your friend, not mine, you know what they like.

So as you prepare to enter into the Christmas and festive season, regardless of your context, give yourself some grace. Things have been hard, and it is perfectly acceptable to acknowledge that difficulty. In fact, it is healthy. Katie and I have been running a marathon season for almost a year now, and we are exhausted, sick, and wrung out. We are looking forward to a slow holiday season of doing absolutely nothing, and we’ve earned it. I’d encourage you to push back against that cultural narrative that says you must constantly be doing, producing, and striving. Carve out some time to sit, breathe, and reflect. Be grateful for those you love, especially the distant ones. Then communicate the love you have for them to them; they need to hear it.

May your Christmas holiday have an equal measure of rest, full hearts, and joy, and may you know a little bit more that the Creator of the Universe, Jesus Christ, loves you deeply and cares about all of your needs.

Blessings,

Ben Aijian (Executive Director)

For more information on Culture Shock and Culture Stress, please reach out via email, or check out these resources:

Ben Aijian