Did You Visit Your Relatives Today?

Wednesday, May 18, 2011, 16:43

For all those who are grateful to their family, here is a wonderful chance to meet and share those good, old and pleasant moments of life. Today, is the day to celebrate with family, today is "Visit Your Relatives Day". The special occasion marked for those who would want to meet their relatives and loved ones. On this day, people meet or send cards, gifts to their family members to convey their love and affection for them.

The day also implies to those who would intend to meet their aunts, grandparents or cousins who they seldom meet. But why a day to meet family and relatives?. Its' because the generation today are busy with lives and hardly get in touch with their blood relatives. For some, "Visit Your Relatives Day" is an additional chance to wish their lady love and mother, which they missed to wish on Valentine's day and Mother's Day.

In India, the joint family system still exists where all the close knit relatives stay under one roof, and to them, "Visit Your Relatives Day" seems strange. Although there are computers at home, people in India are bound to family values and would prefer letters than emails. The brothers and sisters of the parents are loved and respected the same way. Many south Indian languages have terms like Chikkamma (meaning small mother) for the younger sister of the mother and Doddamma (meaning big mother) for the elder sister of the mother, signifying the equivalence of the relationship .

There are many festivals celebrated in India (almost every month) and is considered as an opportunity to meet relatives and seek blessings of the elders. Marriages are never complete without the relatives, and despite the population in the country, people unite and believe in the saying that the "family that eats together, lives together".

But the Indian mentality is such that they wouldn't mind meeting people on any day, all that they wait is for that one good reason and that can happen today (May 18th) as it is “visit your relatives day".