About being "proud of your roots"

[CleansingSurfaceWipe]

I was just idly reading about Dermot O'Leary being "extremely proud of his Irish roots" (his parents are from Ireland, I believe, though he grew up in England). It suddenly struck me how weird I think that whole concept is.
Is it not just as absurd as someone being "ashamed"of their "roots"? How can they be a cause for either pride or shame?

Why would you keep the main ones SirChenjin?

The thing about Remembrance Day that I never ever talk about isn't really about big P politics at all, but is quite a lot simpler, and I suspect is actually pretty common only nobody ever talks about it.

I am deeply, deeply uncomfortable with events which include military parades, or any sort of military presence because I am scared of British soldiers. My experiences weren't bad. I was never physically hurt. I just had cat-calls, groping, having guns pointed at me for a laugh, being stopped and questioned intrusively and humiliatingly (and often with sexual harassment) at gunpoint. I know lots of people who experienced much worse, especially those who are older than I am. But when I see a man in uniform, my instinct is to lower my head, look as unobtrusive as possible, and move away quickly.

I should rephrase that - I would keep the ones I like, but would take on the new ones. I would imagine that the new ones would slowly take over as the DCs grew up and if they married locals then my traditions would play a very small part in their lives, if at all - and rightly so.

For all those who don't believe in cultural pride, would you simply give up all your traditions if you moved to another country and just do everything the locals do?

Almost certainly not. But I think I'd see the traditions I kept as being for comfort, habit, etc., rather than pride. I might make a nice meal on Christmas day (despite not being religious), for example. But I'm not sure "pride" would have much to do with it for me. I suppose I might seek the company of others who wanted to do something similar sometimes. But, again, I'm not sure I'd be seeking a shared sense of pride, as much as someone to share the cooking.

I think it depends how you define 'traditions'. For example, I read a lot on here about Christmas traditions, and lots of them are ones I don't do. I do, however, have Christmas presents, and a more special meal than normal (although not usually a 'traditional' roast dinner) I just don't explicity think of them as traditions. So if I moved somewhere that didn't celebrate Christmas, or celebrated on Christmas Eve, then I would probably end up doing a mix of things.

Cailindana "For all those who don't believe in cultural pride, would you simply give up all your traditions if you moved to another country and just do everything the locals do?"

I don't have any "traditions" (unless you count wearing a poppy). At least if I have any traditions, they are personal. And what does "do everything the locals do" mean? I'm an atheist so I'd be an atheist whatever country I was living in. If there was a national day of some sort in another country, I think I'd just do whatever I was doing that day but we don't do St George's Day here either.

Cailindana I said, I like living in England, she didn't. I don't have any Irish friends at all, every single one of my friends is English, including my husband. Where did you get the idea I don't have English friends???

My fault, I read only one of your comments and misconstrued/misunderstood it.

For all those who don't believe in cultural pride, would you simply give up all your traditions if you moved to another country and just do everything the locals do?

I have done, but that's just me - I prefer to experience new things and fit in, and I'm not someone who particularly preserves the way I do things. But then I've only lived in European countries and that's a very similar and easier culture to adopt. I do believe in cultural pride, but not xenophobia or parochialism. I find the sort of person who tends to constantly remind you of their nationality (I have a couple of Scottish nationalist friends on FB) is very tedious. Yes, we get it, you're Scottish, everyone is born somewhere, don't need to be reminded over and over again how Scottish you are.

If your children grew up and didn't want to celebrate Christmas you would feel ok about that Sir? No Christmas with your grandkids?

Cleansing if someone laughed at your shared Christmas dinner and said 'how English!' would you feel fine about that?

I was having an almost opposite yet similar thought the other day CailinDana. Dd has been 'doing' Diwali at pre-school this week and we'll go to an event at the weekend because it's pretty and I think she'll enjoy it. She said, after watching a programme about it, that we should be celebrating diwali in our house - I said we're doing it elsewhere at the weekend. I didn't say 'it's lovely but it's not 'our' festival, it's someone else's, it's real for those other children you know but not for you'.

Then I thought, well why not? In the same way that we celebrate Christmas as atheists, now quite deliberately as a portmanteau mid-winter festival of our own making, not as an 'is essentially Christian just we've dropped the belief bit' event as I used to perceive it. Why not appropriate and enjoy the nice bits of other festivals - which are now a part of what it is to be British, in a 'menu of options' way?

So gaining and evolving rather than dropping 'my cultural traditions'. Traditions are evolving all over the place, far less 'penny for the guy' now than in my childhood. I'm not going to make a stand about that, things change. So, a bit of assimilation, evolution and personal pick and mixing for me.

I can't think of anything much more nationalistic and having pride in your roots than publicly wearing a symbol to remember dead soldiers that you don't even know.

I agree that, in some contexts at least, poppies can be associated with national pride. I don't like engaging with this element of the ritual.

I don't usually wear a poppy, but there are manifestations of the whole remembrance thing which I think can or could be positive. A minute to reminder some of the many, many men and boys who died in the horrors of war (I wouldn't limit this to Brits). A reminder of the horrors of war in themselves, and how it is to be avoided if at all possible (not something our current Western governments seem to be onboard with at all). I keep the silence to think of these things. However, I don't consider any of these manifestations to be very nation-related.

Traditions include: Saying 'bless you' when someone sneezes, celebrating Easter and Christmas, giving birthday presents, celebrating new year, giving sympathy cards, cremating or burying the dead, ways of naming children, attitudes to divorce/homosexuality, attitudes to family structure pretty much every social convention. The idea you could give all of these up and adopt an entirely new way of living based on people you hardly know is laughable.

Cleansing if someone laughed at your shared Christmas dinner and said 'how English!' would you feel fine about that?

This is hard to answer. It entirely depends on how it is intended. Plenty of times, friends of mine have laughed at things I do (including cultural traditions) in a way that doesn't offend me in the least. I can laugh with them, and vice versa.

On the other hand, if it were bullying, or intended spitefully, or if people tried to prevent me from doing the things I want to do, then I am sure I wouldn't like it. In this instance, I can certainly see why a group of people might develop a kind of "pride" to protect themselves and their identities.

If your children grew up and didn't want to celebrate Christmas you would feel ok about that Sir? No Christmas with your grandkids?

I would feel sad - but I certainly wouldn't force them to celebrate Christmas. They would be the citizens of another country and would grow up forming their own traditions and customs, which is absolutely as it should be.

I'm English, my whole tree back to the 1400s is local! I'm very proud to be from my area and England as a whole.

My roots are Cornish and Forest of Dean (Glos) and to me these are lovely counties.

I agree, OP. Accidents of birth are nothing to be either proud or ashamed of. Perfectly OK to be proud of what someone has personally achieved, and this may sometimes be linked to nationality.

cailin, I might be interpreting a tone that isn't in your posts, or misunderstanding you - are you saying you don't believe in people who don't have some sort of cultural root?

I don't celebrate any of my parents' religious festivals. So what. If I had kids, they might want to be believers in a god from the vast choice available. We're all individuals, surely if you have children you acknowledge and accept that.

I find it really odd that there are people on this thread actually telling other people what they are allowed to feel.

To be honest, I think a lot would depend on why I was moving somewhere with such a different way of life (if we're looking at things like ways of dealing with the dead). I would find it very difficult to move somewhere where being homophobic was the norm, and I don't see myself adopting that. If we're looking at festivals I don't celebrate New Year (unless you count getting depressed at all the retrospectives and the pressure to be having a brilliant time) or Easter and I'm very low key about Christmas, so that wouldn't worry me as much. I suspect properly testing those attitudes wouldn't really hit until I was living through it.

The pride isn't about being proud of coming from a country that has Christmas dinner, or thinking that it's better to eat a Christmas dinner than do whatever the equivalent local tradition is. It's about joining in with local events, but being happy to express and share your own customs, too, where they don't clash.

So you might keep an advent calendar, or import huge quantities of decent tea, or make mince pies at Christmas time, or sing the nursery rhymes you grew up with to your children, or continue being slightly self-deprecating, or carry on using swear words which the locals find faintly ridiculous, or keep a really good bottle of scotch for special occasions, or listen to Radio 4, or bake a sponge birthday cake with candles for your children's birthdays, or follow the football or cricket, or make your children write thank you cards for their presents where that isn't the local custom.

And the pride doesn't come in thinking that those things are better that the local customs, but in thinking that they are just as good, and make you happy, so that you will carry on doing them even though they are no longer normal.

And your children will grow up associating some of those things with home, and love and family, and will do some of them with their own children.

How could you not be proud of being irish. Jees.

Backs away from lynching. ....

cailindana Traditions include: Saying 'bless you' when someone sneezes, celebrating Easter and Christmas, giving birthday presents, celebrating new year, giving sympathy cards, cremating or burying the dead, ways of naming children, attitudes to divorce/homosexuality, attitudes to family structure pretty much every social convention. The idea you could give all of these up and adopt an entirely new way of living based on people you hardly know is laughable.

I don't actually do a lot of those things and of the ones that I do, the other country also did them. I think most Europeans give birthday presents and either cremate or bury their dead these days. How many people (without children) celebrate Easter?! I don't say "bless you" when someone sneezes, when I was in Germany I said the German word for it. I gave up actively celebrating New Year when I stopped being a student.

If I lived in a non-European culture, I'd probably keep the cultural traditions that were most important to me, quite possibly mainly ones I felt had a moral basis, such as treating women as equal to men. In fact, I would probably refuse to live in a country that didn't share those values.

And it's also about accepting that you can't just move to another country and take on all their customs wholesale because they aren't your customs and you don't understand them properly and get them a bit wrong whenever you try.

It possibly may come from a time when the Irish were duscriminated against in the UK ( as were others) - 'No Irish or ......... need apply'

'cailin, I might be interpreting a tone that isn't in your posts, or misunderstanding you - are you saying you don't believe in people who don't have some sort of cultural root?'

Lorelei, unless you grew up in a windowless box, every single person on the planet comes from some sort of culture, be that the culture of their parents or their friends. You didn't come up with Christmas on your own, you celebrate because it's part of your culture. You didn't spontaneously think of having a funeral with a burial/cremation when someone dies, that comes from your culture. You didn't come up with the idea of queues, that's a cultural thing (incidentally Irish people aren't as particular about queuing as English people can be). Allowing girls to go to school is cultural thing, not all cultures do that. Shaving the heads of babies is a cultural thing. Giving children a middle name is a cultural thing.

British people seem to think their way of life is the 'standard' way of life and everything else is quaint and ethnic and cultural. Newsflash in any other country outside Britain you're a foreigner with strange ways. It's like the woman who said 'I don't have an accent.' Eh yes you do love, you have an English accent.