What Is Culture?

It’s a big question, and an easy one to overcomplicate. When people talk about culture, they often think first of art, literature, and academic life. Those are certainly part of it, and they matter. But culture is much broader than that. It also includes the everyday customs and habits people share—the things that can sound old-fashioned to talk about, though they’re not old-fashioned at all.

Folk culture, broadly speaking, is the way ordinary people live: what they eat, do and believe; how they speak, marry and mourn; what they fear, admire, and pass along without necessarily studying or formally learning it.

Family Matters

At its simplest, culture is what feels normal to you.

That definition works at almost any scale, whether you’re thinking about a country, a city, or a family. A family’s habits are shaped by the wider culture around it, of course, but they’re also its own. Every family has a slightly different way of doing things.

This is worth remembering because, if we treat culture as something reserved for museums and universities, we can end up seeing ourselves as spectators. We may even think we have no culture of our own. But everyone grows up somewhere, among people and routines that shape what seems ordinary. That, too, is culture.

Rooted in Routine

Think about the start of your day. How do you greet your spouse or your children? What happens next? Maybe there’s a routine you’ve followed for years, a prayer before breakfast, or a particular way you like to dress.

There are small habits in the way we treat other people, too. Do you hold the door open? Insist that a guest go first? Which comments seem polite to you, and which feel rude?

Then there’s dinner. Who makes it? Do you eat together, say a prayer, linger at the table, or have coffee afterward? Maybe dessert is mostly for weekends. These details vary, even among people who live close to one another.

What happens after dinner? You might read, watch television, work a little longer, or put on music. Perhaps you have a drink; perhaps you don’t. When you go to bed, and when you get up again, are part of the pattern as well.

Most of these things seem too ordinary to notice. They’re just routines. And they are—but they’re also small pieces of culture. Added together, these daily habits help make up the shape of a life.

Home Truths

We often notice family customs most clearly after leaving home. At 18, perhaps, you move away and discover that other people don’t eat the same holiday meals, keep the same hours, or follow the same table manners. Being around people who do things differently can make you see your own habits more clearly, including the ones you’d never thought to question.

That’s one reason family culture matters. It’s easy to focus on grand ideas of culture and overlook the everyday moments that teach children what feels normal.

The cake you bake because your grandmother made it is one example. So are Friday fishing trips with your son, or a Sunday dinner the family keeps having, even when the week has been busy.

These traditions may not seem especially important while they’re happening. Still, the ordinary things children grow up with can be the things they pass on later. That’s one way culture lasts, and every family helps carry it forward, whether or not anyone calls it culture.