What parts of our traditions and culture makes you feel like you belong in Britain

Pubs - small cosy pubs with lovely fires. Walks in the countryside, gardens, music, Radio 4 and 6 music. Antiques Roadshow. Corner shops. M&S Eclectic choice of restaurants. The people.
We’ve travelled loads, lived in other countries but these are the things we came back for, it wasn’t dramatic, it just felt like home.

I remember a Spanish person at work saying how they didn't realise how similar Catalonia was to the rest of Spain until she moved abroad.

I agree with a pp that English culture isn't one or 2 big things it is a load of tiny ones which as a group (or a subset as a group) make up our culture.

Church bells ringing on a Sunday morning, or for a wedding, or half muffled for funerals or Remembrance day.

I don't think I really felt my Britishness until I moved abroad. For me it's mainly about the way people relate to one another - mostly unintrusive but with care and humour. I'm from the north and have lived in another European country for close to a decade now where people are generally more reserved, and it feels very harsh by comparison. A good example - last week I was on the bus with my two small kids and it made an emergency stop. I was standing with the buggy and fell very hard onto the floor of the bus (hard enough to give me a massive bruise). My kids were both quite shaken by watching me fall, but not a single person asked whether I was ok. I don't think that would happen in the UK, except possibly in London, certainly not where I'm from.

It’s not anything consistent- what makes you English won’t be the same as someone else, but it’s a huge selection of little things. I see it most clearly when I’m abroad and can’t get/have something I want. Marmite and weetabix, for example. Many, many flavours of crisps in small packets.

The shape of the land and the agriculture on it- we have unusually varied landscapes in a small space. In some countries you can drive for days before the landscape changes.

Love for animals
Support for the underdog

tea and tea cosies
Fish and chips
Feeding The birds.
Gardening

I’m not from these parts but the social awkwardness, minding my own business and never really jumping to invite people around makes me feel like I’m definitely in the right place to live out my life.

I disagree about humour and queuing, surprisingly. Every country deals with life’s troubles with humour, we just won’t be able to pick up on it if we don’t speak the language + it’s highly localised and cultural. As for queues, I’ve never had as many attempts to jump the queue as I’ve had here so at this point I think it’s just a myth.

Roast dinners, cups of tea, day drinking on sunny days, fish and chips on a Friday (chip rolls!), fry ups. Xmas day with the Queen's speech (now the King's).

Fantastic multiculturalism, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th generation immigrants and white British living together in peace and harmony.

Keeping calm and carrying on through daily toil and grind.

Collective moaning and a laugh about the weather daily.

Food from anywhere and everywhere available from all corners of the globe.

The British education and health system looking after generations after generations from birth to death.

I am a born and bred South London, 3rd generation immigrant. Proud of my Asian ancestry and South London upbringing. Luckily I still live in a very multicultural part of London where there is love, respect and tolerance for each other.

Queuing
Long arguments about inconsequential things, such as where the North starts or what a individual lump of bread is called
Making fun of everything (such as the poll to name a research ship being won by Boaty McBoatFace)

I feel I belong here because I'm British. (I don't mean people who aren't British don't belong here). I grew up watching Coronation Street and Only Fools and Horses, and eating cottage pie!
As an adult, and an atheist with no kids, the christian festivals don't mean much to me.
But DH and I love pubs! We're not big drinkers, but DH loves real ale and anytime we visit somewhere new in the UK or go away for a weekend break, we go to the most historic pub we can find - something with flagstone floors, beams, an open fire - and settle into a corner with our dog, and have a few drinks and eat pie and mash or fish and chips!
Also, the sense of humour in Britain is the best in the world.

summer fetes
cricket on a village green
morris dancing
queuing
being hopeless at languages
democracy
driving on the left
scones
English breakfast
christmas trees
bonfire night
apologising when someone steps on your foot
the royal family
moaning and taking our freedoms for granted
fair play
freedom of speech
freedom of religion
boat race
knowing about oxbow lakes (!) (see QI episode)

I thought Christmas markets were a German thing, or continental anyway ?

I have been out the UK a couple of decades now, and I can't ever remember seeing a Christmas market.

Where do you live?

Guy Fawkes night - a proper bonfire and local fire works display. Or go to Lewes if you want the full 5th Nov experience.

Obviously you just missed that so in the run up to Christmas what about going to a local National Trust property all done up for Christmas in keeping with the era of its hey dey? Book a local Christmas show or Pantomime. We are in London and always go to the Old Vic for a Christmas Carol because it’s brilliant every year and the kids see it as the start of advent.

Races on Boxing Day is one I love to embrace. Or join a local sea dip on Christmas Day if you are near the coast. Midnight mass at your local church or christingles if your kids are small. I’m not religious but always go for carols.

I recently moved from South London to Northampton. Basically 80 miles up the M1. Northampton is a bit of an oddity in that the town centre is a bit crap and depressing, but walk along the Welly Road and life is thriving. It has businesses owned by many nationalities, decent pubs and nightspots, and omg the range of food! I love the diversity of the area. I think that's something to be proud of, that people come here from everywhere else and revive parts of the country previously on the slide.

I also love the weather, and complain how hot/cold/wet it is!

I love our heritage. I read somewhere that Northants has the greatest concentration of country houses in the UK, including famously, Althorp House. I'm also an atheist but love visiting churches and how Christianity has an undeniable influence on our social and political history, good and bad. I love the art in historical places too. Some again, is political, though on the face of it doesn't seem so at first.

I'm not really a Christmas or Easter person, but I will defend anyone's rights to their faith and traditions. You can come here and worship whomever or whatever you like. Equally an an atheist, I can be free not to.

Although I'm having trouble accessing it right now, I love the principles of the NHS. I don't mind paying for it because it's kept my parents, my brother and me from early deaths or disability, and for that I am nothing but grateful.

I love that I can leave Northampton and go somewhere else fifty miles away and the accent changes alongside the scenery. And it constantly changes wherever I go. I love the fact that being English is so different from being Welsh, Scottish or Northern Irish. I love all the indigenous languages we have, and how people are trying to preserve them.

The media piss on our nation so much but under the rhetoric I think we are pretty cool, actually.

Nothing. Not anymore. I have English and French parents. I was born and raised in England. Educated here and lived my life here. Since the referendum, I've felt completely rejected by this country. It was, and still is, a completely visceral feeling. When my family commitments here end, I'm going home, back to my mother's country. This country is not what it was. I feel like a stranger here, it is an odd sensation.

The Hedgerows low, Hedgehogs, Patchwork fields like quilts, Blackberries , Tea rituals, Barbour rainwear, Aunt Sally Tombola , Fete , Gentile blushing Maidens Period costume Drama , Laura Ashley , Liberty, Morris dancing English fayre and Epicure The Bard a MidSummer eve, woodland foxgloves Barn owls red foxes Shire Horse and hound ,The plough and Haystack Inns, Shrews ,A Gentleman in Tweed camouflaged colours of the landscape. Victorian spa seaside towns cheeky postcards and rock. A high trust society queues a woman who could rule and be Queen and be a figurehead. Britiannia , Naval isle , Nettle tea, Mash and liquor, cockles by the seashore, Raymond Briggs, Beatrix potter Daisys , Cricket, old creaky inns, red pillar boxes and phoneboxes manners maketh cloth caps school uniforms with boater hats Steam railways, Bluebells, love of dogs and horses. Community spirit, pies WI,Conservatory, Mini Twiggy, Grand Britiana and Union its about united a Kingdom 🥰 love this land and feel very lucky. The fields to roam are green its the rain the wildlife does not present danger the wit and humble soul a guard may be up but once its down you are beloved.

I think this ties in well with a recent thread on " American Scottish " How can Americans be Scottish/Irish/Italian if they have never been there?

As a Scot. I could say to an American Scot, how can you be your age, and Scottish, without having felt the utter desolation of being a school leaver during the Thatcher era ?

Because surely the negative aspects of collective identity also form a part of our culture. Our culture is not just the stuff that makes us feel warm and fuzzy.

But the thing is, I suppose, is that my experience of the Thatcher years is not the same as everyone else in the town where I lived. Although it certainly felt that way :-)

. So can we really all have a common culture ? Nationality is just a label really.

I think that even the things we might feel are ingrained into us, like quoting Monty Pythons " Life of Brian" and having a shared understanding of the reference is not unique to British culture.

After all, What have the Romans ever done for us?

I would say rather a lot actually. And we are not the only nation to say that.

I reckon being British is a bit like being a fruit cake. Lots of different ingredients, different recepes, and a Brit Fruitcake is near identical to a French fruitcake.

Except our fruitcake sinks, like little stones, little tiny ones.

Love the varied architecture from castles,Georgian town houses ,Stately homes.
One of our favourite visits was Castle Howard it was stunning on one hand but on the other the opulence seemed obscene when considering how ordinary people lived.
Suppose not much has changed in that regard.

@ClamChowders I loved your post

I love the countryside and landscape and the small towns and villages (I’m very interested in architecture). I love history too, and the music which I associate with England in particular: Holst, Vaughan Williams, Elgar, Finzi, Britten etc.

Also the literature: Shakespeare, obvs, Milton, Keats, Wordsworth, Hardy etc.

I’m interested in the history and culture of the other UK nations too, and of France, Italy and the Netherlands. I like countries to retain their special characteristics and not become one homogeneous mass, which is where we’re increasingly heading. I love that Wales prioritises it’s language, for eg, and would use some phrases if I was going there. I wish all countries would hold on to and celebrate what makes them different and special and I strongly identify as English.

I’m a Northern European, though, by temperament! Cannot stand heat, love the changing seasons and frosty winters.