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.

This is like asking 'what is a woman?'

I don't know, I just am!!!

There are cultural things we might actively notice and appreciate like country pubs, London buses, cricket. Then there are shared generation-specific references, e.g. to the TV programmes and adverts of previous decades.
But I think the most significant shared culture is what we take for granted and don’t notice until it’s not there. For example I occasionally see YouTube videos by Americans who’ve moved to the UK explaining how things which are perfectly normal in their culture (for example asking people about their religion as small talk!) aren’t done here and vice versa. There’s a whole raft of shared assumptions which we wouldn’t even notice.

A tricky one because my heritage is not English: my father was a German/Jewish refugee, my maternal grandfather a Russian refugee and my grandmother's grandfather an Irish economic refugee. We have a home on the borders of London and in Southern France.

And yet I feel innately English. In England I'd never be mistaken as anything else, in France even the French stop me for directions.

I agree with everything others have said, especially ClamChowder. What has been left out are class and inverted snobbery.

I fear for English culture at present on two fronts. We truly are at heart, as Napolean said, a nation of shopkeepers and the high street and local markets have been devastated by Amazon/internet shopping. Also the funding for the Arts and Humanities in HE risks our cultural heritage and it would be woeful if it were lost.

Food: meat and fruit pies, custards, jellies and blancmange, good meat and fresh fruit and vegetables (by virtue of our climate), steamed puddings, savoury and sweet. English food is fundamentally excellent when not swamped by beige convenience stuff. The English are lazy cooks on the whole.

A lot of it is having a shared set of cultural references.

Things like the kids' TV shows you watched, the songs you dance to at weddings, the big news stories you remember breaking and what you were doing at the time, the songs you sang in school assemblies, the shops (past and present) on every high street, the brands of food you get in the supermarket and their associated adverts...

Living in a different country, it really is the small things like that which mark the difference between feeling like you come from somewhere or not. The shared references between a whole set of people. There's nothing more alienating than being at a wedding and a song comes on you've never heard of but everyone else screams in happiness and starts singing along and dancing madly, all laughing with each other. Or being at a dinner and it gets into "do you remember..." but you don't remember any of the TV shows/celebrities/adverts/shops/news events being referenced because they were specific to that country at a certain time and in their national consciousness but not yours.

Yes, you and nearly everyone else on this thread. It’s very tedious hearing British being equated with English.

Why don’t you say English, if that’s what you mean?

I couldn’t actually clearly untangle my English identity from my British identity. Born and brought up in England but married a Scot and have Irish, French, and Scottish ancestry. I understand why people are irked by British/English equivalence, but English culture is inextricably linked to the rest of Britain and has extensive global influence too, so explaining English culture in isolation quickly becomes nonsensical.

I'm British specifically English

I love how you can be in desolate countryside in one hour and a busy town in the next as our island is so small. I also love how our history is preserved and shows through from our roman roads (A5 anyone) to our tudor castles. We were invaded by so many but kept a lot of it and is still used today like the word Mercia for example.

place marking. This is interesting

How would you know ,what gives you that feeling without the traditional things ,where does your identity for who you are come from.
I wish I felt like that

Sorry

Interesting but dh is two years younger than me and his sisters younger still. We watched completely different children's tv programmes. He recalls stuff I've no recollection of. He was also reared on Yorkshire TV, me on Anglia.

What a beautiful post

Lord I wouldn't both with NT. I say this as someone who works in heritage. NT only shows a very small proportion of what life was like for very very lucky people.

For me, it's archaeology and social history. I'm really excited about the museum of London opening and loved the old one. Newark civil war museum is probably one of the best museums I've ever been to. Also Manchester People Museum, Barnsley Museum. Look to these places.

I am Scottish, and I just live with it.

It's part of Scottish culture after all. Being down trodden by the English.. We could say it differentiates us from them.

In fact, excuse the language, this quote from the film Trainspotting is pretty good:

"It's SHITE being Scottish! We're the lowest of the low. The scum of the fucking Earth! The most wretched, miserable, servile, pathetic trash that was ever shat into civilization. Some hate the English. I don't. They're just wankers. We, on the other hand, are COLONIZED by wankers. Can't even find a decent culture to be colonized BY. We're ruled by effete arseholes. It's a SHITE state of affairs to be in, Tommy, and ALL the fresh air in the world won't make any fucking difference!"

And when I get the Hadrian's wall stuff thrown at me, I just say, " Actually, the latest archeological evidence is that the Romans built it to keep you in, not to keep us out. Enjoy your Roman roads. They never defeated us "

I post this lightheartedly. :-)

Actually. I looked it up. Lincoln copied the idea from Germany in 1982. So yeah, Christmas markets are German.

Christmas markets are as British as Bratwurst :-)

It’s difficult to explain! I’m nothing else - I’m entirely English. Perhaps because my ancestors for so many hundreds of years were the poorest of the poor, working the same fields for generations, and my father’s generation were the last to do it - it gives you a sense of unbroken stability, continuity, attachment to the land and the people there.

I was lucky enough to know many of the older generations of my family who’d fought in the wars to defend Britain and preserve our way of life. It was a very present theme in my childhood, not something from a history book - my family took their part in it and talked about it.

Some people are ‘somewheres’ and others are ‘anywheres’ - I’m very much a somewhere. This is my history, my family, my country, and I have such a deep love for it - it’s all shaped me. It was a magical experience as a child going to evening services at the cathedral when it was dark - all the weight of that history bearing down on me, knowing my family had done the same for hundreds of years before me, loved this place, cherished this place, that I was a continuing part of the chain carrying it into the future.

Whether I watch cricket or go to bonfire night is irrelevant, that’s all performative, the outward display. Not to say that I don’t enjoy those things, but it doesn’t change how I feel inside, my sense of identity and security in it.

I can answer you as someone who left my home country as a teen. It's when other people accepts you as their own.

I spent my secondary years to my 30s in a foreign country. I have citizenship but I am always a foreigner. I will never say I'm from there.

I moved to the UK in my 30s and now I'm 50. I am also a foreigner here. Again, if I say I'm British, people here will look at me funny.

I have been away from my home country now for over 35 years. Whenever I go back, at custom, I can queue in their citizen queue with my family and the custom officers will happily stamp my UK passport. Shop keepers will comment I must have lived overseas for a long time because I occassionally misuse a word but they don't treat me as foreign, but an expat.

Do you feel other people don't treat you as British when you are in Britain?

Ah ,so it sounds like you have a large family ,who spend time together chatting and talking about their past ,and your doing things now your family did in past years to give you a connection to them ,like the cathedral evening services .
That's absolutely lovely,I can see how that would give you a connection to where you belong ,which is what I'm struggling with actually.
Thanks your reply was really helpful

I don't consider myself British or 'feel' British as I equate it strongly with imperialism but one exception that always strikes me is the very strong left-wing and feminist tradition across Britain and the UK that I sometimes feel a part of. That line of women who worked hard to ensure women had a status in law, even with different legal systems etc, and the women who work hard to uphold that.

I'm English and I'd group my sense of belonging as an English person into two buckets, one positive, one negative: I ground myself to some extent in all of these both positive and negative

Positive

Sense of the grandeur and beauty of England: it's heart-stoppingly beautiful. The variety in the landscape and seasons is unmatched, the sense of seasons and the way they evolve around you is like nowhere else on earth
Low-key kindness of the people
Dry, ironic sense of humour and the ability to communicate humour without having to be heavy handed or cruel
History -- the history of this country, for all the crimes it has committed, is incredible, and the sense of continuity, gives you a sense of rootedness
Pop culture -- unmatched anywhere in the world

Negative
Reticence and reluctance to say what's on your mind: I've always struggled with this aspect of the English personality even though I suffer from it myself
Snobbery: the hidden codes which allow people to look down on one another are still hard-wired into most of us. Most foreigners rightly regard our social codes as absolute batshit.
The moaning and cynicism: I've lived in the US and there's a sense there that they get shit done as opposed to standing about complaining
Topical negative for the current state of political discourse in England now which I find upsetting but which (hopefully) will pass

I used to feel more British than I do now but the growth of nationalism has taught me to consider myself English, which I do. 20 years ago I would have proudly said British, but not now.

I support the Celtic nations in the way they champion their cultures, and (just from what I know of my Welsh friends - could be true elsewhere) I admire the way that high culture isn’t class-based as much as it is in England. I’m often hearing about farmers in Wales who are muck-spreading during the day and writing poetry by night and winning prizes at Eisteddfods. The English aren’t usually like that…sadly.

i get that there are huge issues, political and historical, but don’t want to go into them here. I just wish all the home nations could be better friends.

I also feel that, while the Celtic nations might justifiably feel their individual cultures are squashed/appropriated/dominated etc by the English, the English themselves are not very good at appreciating their own. There are lots of reasons for this, not least the fashion for putting down anything perceived to be English by the English establishment!

I don't feel any sense of national identity at all. Supporting my football team maybe. A lot of the things people have mentioned remind me of the stuff about England that John Major came out with back in the day.

I think you don't really think about it until you go abroad or hang out with people from other cultures.

For me it's:
-the self-depricating/sarcastic humour
-our comedy shows
-our musicians
-What to call a cob (the only correct term btw)
-the 30000 different accents
-Queueing
-Pub culture
-6am airport pints
-the ability to turn any event into a piss up
-Cheeky nandos
-Spoons
-my German wife was perplexed by the seaside 😂 she loved it, but was like 'why does it feel stuck in the 80s' and had never seen a penny arcade!
-Castles
-Sunday Dinners

And so on! It's ridiculous when people say Brits have no culture. Culture isn't about religion. It's about what you eat, the way you dress, the way you speak, your history, the weather, and so on. Even North/South culture is different. Blew my mind as a Midlands small town girl going to uni and seeing Southerners wear coats on nights out and asking for cloak rooms 😂 For me it's specific things you wouldn't know unless you've been here a long time or you've grown up here.

I also think there's this weird left-wing idea that if you 'feel British' or associate with the 'culture' you are racist or don't understand we were colonisers. I'm very left-wing, and consider myself a socialist, but it doesn't change the fact I am culturally British and if I moved elsewhere I would feel it. It's not right wing to accept your culture is made up of lots of different things. If people saying that suddenly moved to Brazil or Saudi Arabia or something, you'd strongly feel your loss of culture.

Not trying to be agressive or hostile...but don't you equate being French, Belgian, German, Italian, Spanish, Turkish, American, Chinese, Portuguese, Japanese.........with imperialism? If not, may I ask why not?

I don't know why, but it's alarming how many people seem to think the British were the only imperialists. We were, along with nearly all the other European (and other) powers once, but we were far, far from being the worst. Yet we get the most stick.

I've never suggested that I think the British were the only imperialists. Only the British however think people from any part of it should 'feel' British (in the context of being from any part of it) and get a bit angry if people don't.