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

[Lionsandtigersandbears7]

Inspired by another thread ,it got me thinking I don't really have a strong sense of my identity being British..
I'm born in UK ,but moved around a lot ,so don't have an area I feel is home either ,or a strong sense of being British.
There's Christian festivals.christmas and Easter ..is that classed as our culture ?or is that religion?..I suppose there were mods and rockers and teddy boys ,that would of given people a sense of identity..then skinheads and skar ..moving in to music , different types like rock and indie gives people an identity...I missed all that though..
On postcards you get beaches and the seaside towns .. Blackpool was part of my childhood holidays,does that make up part of my identity then ?..
What makes me British other than just being born here ..I feel like culture and identity has passed me by .
I get what it would mean to be Scottish or Irish..I can see an identity with that ..but all I can think of for British is morris dancing.

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.

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).

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

Quite a few that have been cited are not specifically British.

The most traditional picture of the UK to me is the countryside pub, people drinking their pint or tea, cricket in the village and fireworks in November!

At the root of it, any culture is a series of shared experiences that can be hard to define.

I'm fond of the BBC for all it's faults. It is much admired around the world and cannot be compared to, say, American TV.

I also love a pub.

I live in London so there's lots of other things - the tube, the red double deckers, the Tower of London, the Thames, London's fabulous parks, Greenwich! - the world's clocks are set by us.

Sitting in the car, facing the sea, with the windscreen wipers going, eating fish and chips…because we ARE going to enjoy this day out!! 😂

I am laughing if no one saw a queue in the UK where were they during the pandemic 😂

I don't think things have to be specifically British to be part of British culture. Their existence is part of us. They can be part of other cultures too.

So e.g. I put democracy. Lots of countries have a democracy - but lots don't or it is very shaky and open to coups. But our own cluture would be weaker and different without our belief that we have free and fair elections and if we don't like the government we can vote them out in due course.

The confusion on this thread about what is English and what is British is probably quite telling. Even English culture is very diverse, I’m not sure that scousers for instance would think that morris dancing was a part of their culture. There are some shared references, shared history and shared behaviours which are particular to living on these isles. But people forget that culture is always evolving and always has been and isn’t a point stuck in the past.

Every country has its own unique culture, though we are being homogenised by the Internet etc. Some of the posts above capture it really well. Try to think about what an outsider (like me) would see. Compare to other countries you've been to, what's unique to here? At root we are all human, we all do art, music, cuisine, religion, families etc. But the differences enrich us. It's good to notice them. I find uk villages very charming for example. Obviously literature. And the humour, wry, gentle, self deprecating. There's lots more too.

Having lived abroad and come back it used to be our sense of humour, tolerance, ability to laugh at ourselves, the beautiful countryside.
Sadly and somewhat ironically, the so called "patriot" (read racist Reformers) are all about intolerance, and there's fuck all funny about any of them.

Gentle weather and seasons - I live abroad now with baking summers and fierce winters.
Green, open landscape.
Sunday roasts (I am vegetarian, but still think of the roast potatoes, veg and gravy.
Bonfire Night, toffee apples.

Not much about us is exclusively English/British but there are lots of quintessential British/English experiences that don’t come together quite the same anywhere else.
Chippy chips with scraps in paper, somehow crispy and sweaty at the same time.
Going for a walk that starts in suburbia but goes straight into forest or moorland, with sunshine, drizzle, wind, and sleet in the same day. Ending up in a pub or tea room for a cuppa and a piece of improbably large cake and wondering if your red cheeks are due to sunburn or wind-chapping.
The driver nod-hand up that means thank you, and the way cars just seem to negotiate narrow roads and obstacles without much fuss on the whole (yes there are always angry drivers but most journeys just somehow work).
Being delightfully miserable as a family. Doesn’t make much sense but we kind of like having something cohesive to moan about us against the situation.
We are one of the places in the world that has amazing autumn colours.
The many and various words for bread.
The hundreds of villages and localities with slightly rude names.
The English language is built from loads of other languages so there’s huge scope for wordplay. This feeds into our humour.
Big chunky plugs that stay plugged into power sockets.
Kettles that boil fast.

I am British but lived abroad until I was an adult and the things that I loved about Britain and British culture were:

The seasons
Hazelnuts, blackberries, apples
The public footpaths
Sound of wood pigeons
The type of grass we have (it looks nice, it is soft so you can sit on it and it smells great when cut)
Robins and blackbirds
Oak trees
Roses
Hawthorne
The countryside generally

Cheddar cheese
Roasts
Penny sweets and pick and mix

Books:
Agatha Christie
The dark is rising
The secret garden
Famous five
Nina Bawden
Cynthia Harnett
Jane Austin
And many, many more
Poetry

Hymns
Christmas
Churches

History - All sorts of history including castles, old houses, medieval, victorian etc.

My mum's knitting

I imagine they were a thing before the Puritans did away with them but will check this. There are still all kinds of fairs and festivals tied to particular dates in towns and villages across the country.

Some lovely celebratory lists here!❤️

Respect for the queue, have you ever seen those english translation memes? I love those because they are utterly bang on about British politeness.

Oh gosh… tricky one because I don’t feel like I necessarily recognize my country much these days. Everything feels so hateful and sad. Anyway- the things that I think of are

• Literature- Shakespeare, the brontes, the romantic poets, piers ploughman, but also Tolkien, Terry Pratchett, Carol Ann Duffy, Zadie Smith, Hilary Mantel, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan … such a rich literary tradition

• Fish and chips at the seaside. Sticks of rock and amusement arcades

• Pub culture

• Canal traditions and the liveaboard boat community

• Christmas light switch ons, complete with crap pop stars from the 80s/90s

• Curry houses

• the Archers

• Fetes and fairs - and the inevitability of the tombola and slightly eggy Victoria sponge

• The Viking Games in York each year.

• brass bands and morris dancing

• the ubiquity of trains - and train delays

• moorland walks, woodland walks, canal walks, clifftop walks- whatever the weather!

• christmas pudding. Christmas cake and cheese

• allotments

Even if I didn’t participate in any of the traditional things, or eat of the traditional food - all surface level stuff - I’d know myself to be English, and have a deep sense of connection to this land and to the history of it.

All my ancestors bones are buried in this land; my family have been in this same small part of the country for over 800 years. They’ve died in countless numbers over the centuries to defend it, to preserve it, and I’m conscious of their love for this place and the sacrifices they made to protect it as a place where their children and grandchildren could live in peace and prosperity. I remember vividly being four or five years old and seeing the beautiful autumn leaves around my ancient school building and feeling a deep sense of love and affection for this place, my home.

I don’t need to go to a bonfire night or cricket match or eat a toffee apple to know I’m completely English and have a deep, comforting sense of that identity, that long line that stretches back, that sense of belonging. It’s what I am.