Heritage Treasure’s Day celebrated Jan 11

Every year on January 11th, Heritage Treasures Day raises funds for iconic landmarks around the world. It’s also a day to share one’s heritage, preserve monuments, and conserve wildlife.

What do you think of when you hear the word “heritage?”

There are three types: cultural, natural, and mixed. Cultural heritage sites include hundreds of historic buildings and town sites, important archaeological sites, and works of monumental sculpture or painting.

Cultural heritage include cultures, customs, beliefs, rites, rituals, ceremonies, indigenous knowledge, social customs and traditions, arts, crafts, music, political and ideological beliefs that influence culture and behavior, history, practices concerning the natural environment, religious and scientific traditions. This includes tangible culture such as buildings, monuments, landscapes, books, works of art, and artifacts, intangible culture such as folklore, traditions, language, and knowledge, and natural heritage including culturally significant landscapes, and biodiversity.

‘Tangible’ Cultural Heritage refers to physical artifacts that are produced, maintained and transmitted generationally into a society. Some examples of intangible heritage are oral traditions, performing arts, local knowledge, and traditional skills.

Natural heritage refers to natural features, geological and physiographical formations and delineated areas that constitute the habitat of threatened species of animals and plants and natural sites of value from the point of view of science, conservation or natural beauty.

Mixed Heritage is defined as a person’s unique, inherited sense of family identity: the values, traditions, culture, and artifacts handed down by previous generations.

Some families define their heritage primarily as their ethnic, cultural, or national identity. For example, you may be of a Asian, Africa, or European heritage. It is likely that your heritage does not consist of just one culture because ancestry is often mixed.

Your family culture is the traditions, habits, practices, and values your family has. It’s who you are as a family. It is what makes you different than all the other families in the world. It’s your family identity with your own personal traditions.

Do you think about traditions in your family that have been passed down from generation to generation?

Speak Your Mind below and share with us some of your family practices and treasures that keep your heritage alive.