Paying lobola for the bride or not? May the groom choose his wife or should the family do it for him? Will there be one or two (church and traditional) wedding ceremonies? Will there be a vigil before the funeral? Will the ancestors play any role at the funeral?

All the people of South Africa have ceremonies and rituals for those important events in life like funerals, weddings, birthdays, Christmas and other family or community gatherings. And nowadays with Covid everywhere, some of these gatherings are prohibited or curtailed making it even more clear to us how important it is for us to have them, and to be able to invite our loved ones to them.

We all have different ways to celebrate but, essentially, we have the same intention with these rituals or gatherings. It is to include and recognise our family and community in our most intimate social life – we need to share our lives with these special people. So even if we do not all do it in the same way, and our family or community have their own special tradition, we must be careful to look down on other South Africans who may do it in a different way. Regardless of how we do it, we all have the same goal in mind – to be with our family and friends when we really need their presence and support.

Try to cultivate some understanding that we may have different backgrounds in which we were taught different ways to celebrate special functions with our family and community. But that we all have this desire to be close to our family and community, to be accepted and acknowledged by them, to share our joy and grief with those closest to us, to be supported by them. We are all human beings and this is one of the values we all share. 

Let’s give all South Africans the freedom and the benefit of our goodwill to just be the good people we really are.

Honor God by accepting each other, as Christ has accepted you. Romans 15:7 CEV

Be sure to welcome strangers into your home. By doing this, some people have welcomed angels as guests, without even knowing it. Hebrews 13:2 CEV

Don’t mistreat any foreigners who live in your land. Instead, treat them as well as you treat your own people and love them as much as you love yourself. Remember, you were once foreigners in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. Leviticus 19:33‭-‬34 CEV