The UK are not just southern England - in defence of Santa

[MajorCarolDanvers]

Week and week, day after day there is thread after thread complaining that we "Brits" don't all speak the same way and are falling prey to evil American influences.

Patiently, on each every thread, people from Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and Northern England explain that we have different accents, dialects and cultural identities.

We are told we are lazy, coarse, uneducated and American.

So for all those who say Santa, Guising, Outwith, Mom, Mam, or drop your Ts or your 'ings' or roll your Rs and whatever else it is that JARS and GRATES on delicate southern ears I celebrate you.

YABU - learn to speak RP like a proper Brit
YANBU - there is more to UK than the south of England

I'm a bit confused by this thread. My parents were Scottish and we always said Santa? I'm in my 50s so it's not a new thing.

I’m Scottish born in the 70s, parents born in the 40s, grandparents born in the 20s alive till I was a student. None of us have ever used “Father Christmas”. I had never heard it in real life till I was an adult. The book graph is no help as all the books in my early childhood were so utterly unbelievably southern English they had no bearing on our lives. We’d no more have said “Father Christmas” than “lashings of ginger beer”.

It is thought that the tradition of it being Santa Claus in Scotland comes of our historic trading and cultural links with the Low Countries particularly the Netherlands, and survived or post dated the most austere periods of Calvinist dominance during parts of the seventeenth century.

This sound far-fetched to me. The part of the UK with the strongest trading and cultural links with the low countries was East Anglia so if the tradition of Sinterklaas came directly from the Dutch you'd expect it be strongest there, not in Scotland and especially not in Ireland.

Not to mention that it seems a remarkable coincidence that Sinterklass was supposedly corrupted to the exact same thing - Santa Claus - in both the US and Scotland.

Much more likely it was an Americanism that was transported back to Scotland and Ireland, albeit an old Americanism that's been around in those countries for several generations now, rather than a recent one.

Ah I get it now. You're saying that people from other parts of the UK, not south, say Santa.
I don't really know why people get bothered about this stuff. I'm from the north but live in London. I sometimes use regional words people here don't use. No- one cares.

No- one cares.

Lucky you. Not all of us have the same experience.

@MatildaIThink

There are different accents (and even languages) in different regions of the UK, that does not remove the fact that there is growing Americanisation of the way English is spoken in the UK.

But it also doesn’t remove the fact that some things ill-informed people regard as Americanisations, like Hallowe’en, went to the US because Irish emigrants brought their traditions with them.

@BellaChagall

Ah I get it now. You're saying that people from other parts of the UK, not south, say Santa. I don't really know why people get bothered about this stuff. I'm from the north but live in London. I sometimes use regional words people here don't use. No- one cares.

That's my experience also.

It's weird to me that London is held up as being a place where no-one can cope with the idea that things are different elsewhere/people use different words etc., but London is surely one of, if not the most, diverse places in the UK? There are people from all over the UK and the world living here, I'd say we're likely to be the least bothered by people using different words or accents/having different traditions/things being different etc because we're exposed it constantly so it doesn't even register.

That said, if someone referred to Santa as 'Big Johnny Winter' I would raise an eyebrow.

@Shiningpath

See also “but it’s not the school holidays, why aren’t your kids in school?” and “but it’s not cold/ wet/warm/dry”. Some people, naming no names as to where they tend to come from, seem to have no idea a whole world exists beyond their own and it might just vary a bit.

Oh god yes. This was really evident this time last year when people couldn't understand that some areas of the country had been under covid restrictions forever ( it felt like that) and we're pretty fed up and that some of us hadn't been able to go to the pub to eat/drink outside because it had been pissing down with rain for months.

English is renowned for borrowing words from other languages and cultures, so whether Santa Claus in the UK and Ireland comes from the Netherlands or from the US via the Netherlands, or from here or from somewhere else altogether, it doesn't make it any less a legitimate name than Father Christmas, which itself has only been one of the "standard" names for a couple of centuries.

Similarly, the (false) perceptions that Father Christmas is only used by middle or upper class English people doesn't mean it's a stupid or snobby name. It's just what some people call him.

Let people call him what they want and don't be an arse about it. On that note, Happy/Merry Christmas/Xmas/Chrimbo, all and Seasons Greetings! Hope you get a visit from Santy/Father Christmas/Santa Claus/Sinter Klaas/Saint Nick.

Off topic but why do you need to buy a card with the familial relationship of the recipient printed on it? Don’t they know who they are?

@IVflytrap

YANBU that there is more to the UK than the south of England, and I say that as someone who grew up in Essex. However I'm going to chime in and say that a lot of people here conflate the south of England (and especially the southeast) solely with middle/upper class RP speakers, when the southeast English working class accent not only exists but is usually one of the first to be mocked on here. A lot of Mumsnetters will insist til they're blue in the face that the accent features of Estuary English or even Cockney aren't real accent features, but just working class people being uneducated/not knowing how to speak correctly. I don't see this attitude quite so much for other regional English accents, which I think are perceived as more legitimate and somehow more "real" that the th-fronting and glottal stops of Estuary! I get the impression a lot of people think that while Yorkshire or Geordie accents are (rightly) acceptable regional accents, all southeasterners should be speaking RP, even when it's not our native accent.

However I do agree that dialect features (words like Santa/Santy, outwith and gotten) are unfairly stigmatised because they're not familiar to those in southeast England.

Just let people speak what they speak! I love the variety of accents and dialects on these islands. It makes things interesting. I wouldn't want everyone to speak the same.

Seconding this. There's absolutely snobbery directed from upper-middle class broadly RP-speaking southerners towards other accents, but I think there's sometimes a failure to recognise that there are Southern regional accents that aren't RP. I've met so many people from across the UK that get really snobby about people pronouncing e.g. 'thursday' as 'fursday' while failing to realise that that's effectively the standard pronunciation in London and Essex, including people who think of themselves as defending regional accents.

There are people who blatantly and deliberately mock people's accents/dialects, but I think there are also people who appoint themselves language-police but think of themselves (wrongly) as respectful of accents and dialects. So would criticise 'mom' as American because they don't know there are places in the UK where it's the standard pronunciation, and would criticise 'th' as 'f' because they think of it as wrong/lazy and don't realise it's regional, but wouldn't criticise pronounce 'nasty' with a long or short 'a' because they're used to that being a regional thing.

Because upper middle class Southerners are the most likely to speak something close to RP, which is the accent most privileged in schools/media/politics etc., they tend to suffer the least from this. But normal people with non-RP regional accents all get stereotyped as lazy/wrong/Americanised etc. imo, including in the Southeast and Southwest. Think about the stereotypes you get of people from Essex (Eastenders) or the West Country (farmers) for example.

Santa has been Santa in Scotland for years - long before we were subject to constant influence from american tv. I agree there were loads of such comments last year and yanbu

Yanbu and I live in the SE of England. Mom is another one that seems to confuse people

There is often judgement both ways in the baby name threads too. Lots of puzzled people who can't understand that their pronunciation of a name isn't the only way to say a name. Maybe there needs to be a sticky reminding people of this on that forum.

@daimbarsatemydogsbone

Off topic but why do you need to buy a card with the familial relationship of the recipient printed on it? Don’t they know who they are?

Well presumably they also know it's their birthday/Christmas etc., but we still buy a card that says that on the front.

I believe it's more of a nice gesture than a functional reminder of who they are and what we're celebrating.

“Much more likely it was an Americanism that was transported back to Scotland and Ireland, albeit an old Americanism that's been around in those countries for several generations now, rather than a recent one.”

And England - he’s always been Santa in the North East of England too

@museumum

I’m Scottish born in the 70s, parents born in the 40s, grandparents born in the 20s alive till I was a student. None of us have ever used “Father Christmas”. I had never heard it in real life till I was an adult. The book graph is no help as all the books in my early childhood were so utterly unbelievably southern English they had no bearing on our lives. We’d no more have said “Father Christmas” than “lashings of ginger beer”.

This with bells on, though I do remember my wee cousin asking me if Father Christmas was bringing me something nice one year. Whole house came to a standstill. She apologised humbly and we never mentioned it again.

Father Christmas. In my home town? As if.

Hes not just santa or father christmas, he is also Sion Corn:
Pwy sy'n dwad dros y bryn,
yn ddistaw ddistaw bach;
ei farf yn llaes
a'i wallt yn wyn,
a rhywbeth yn ei sach?

A phwy sy'n eistedd ar y to
ar bwys y simne fawr?
Sion Corn, Sion Corn
Tyrd yma, tyrd i lawr!

I agree with what IVflytrap has posted, Southern accents do have accent features and often on here it is suggested by Mumsnetters from the Midlands or the North that they are just pronouncing words incorrectly. The London accent itself varies depending on which part you live in. The North London accent is different from the South for example and they are all valid accents but they are often not recognised outside of London. There is definitely even a London RP so middle class people in the South East tend to have that regional variation. Again, it is very much an accent.

@Plantstrees

I have said YABU purely because Santa is an Americanism rather than a regional variation. I love to hear different accents but wish we could keep the Americanisms out of our language.

No. This is exactly what the OP is talking about. Santa is the standard term for much of the UK and the term comes directly from our links to northern Europe. We have a family letter from the 1830s mentioning Santa Claus. Hardly some new Americanism.

YANBU but also YABU to think the South of England has no area-specific language and that we're all RP MC poshos.

You've completed missed the Midlands. You know, the big sandwich filling in the middle that also has its own identity!

For those questioning Scotland's links to the Low Countries:

dundeescottishculture.org/news/scotland-and-the-low-countries/

From the article "Scots is thrang wi Dutch words frae the Flemish migration".

Though I admit it doesn't specifically mention Santa.

To those who think Santa is an Americanism, please explain why most of England seems to have been unaffected by this American import while, you claim, it was embraced wholeheartedly by Scotland and Ireland.

Why do you think Scotsnet was started