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.

I think outsiders are often brilliant at analysing national or cultural characteristics. I recommend Bill Bryson (esp Notes from a Small Island) for this. He moved to England for many years, having married an English woman, then moved back to the States but had to come back because he missed the seasons! He's good at nailing the good and less-good aspects of British culture and behaviour. Similarly, Henning Weg (hope I've spelt that right).

One thing I only appreciated fairly recently (mainly from reading the Millennium Trilogy by Stig Larsson, but also from my Scandinavian friends) is why the Brits have a reputation for eccentricity and individualism. These 2 traits are always trotted out as being particularly British, but I never really understood why.

The Scandinavians and many Northern European cultures have a concept 'lagom', which is hard to translate but means something like 'just enough, don't overdo it, don't stand out or try to be different'. This is, I guess, the concept behind IKEA, for eg. My Dutch colleague was invited to a dinner with Queen Beatrix in London, just before she abdicated, and when I asked her excitedly what she planned to wear, she looked at me in bafflement and said she had an M & S jacket from years back that she hoped would do.

It's considered bad form in these nations to try and be deliberately different - it's seen as showing off - in a way that the British don't mind, and actually value. I think that's why we dominated/still dominate popular music and fashion, because of this eccentricity and individuality (punk rock, Zandra Rhodes, Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood etc etc). Yes, the Italians and French are big on fashion but it's nearly always more understated and conventional - think of Chanel or Armani. Armani wouldn't even use actual colours - only neutrals.

I think this is fascinating.

Have you seen the named gritting lorries?

I want to break freeze.
Itsy bitsy teen weeny yellow anti slip machiney

https://www.cornwall.gov.uk/council-news/transport-streets-and-waste/more-transport-streets-and-waste-news-stories/cornwall-has-spoken-your-top-25-gritter-names-revealed/

https://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/transport/hampshire-gritters-these-are-the-funniest-names-of-the-gritting-vehicles-in-hampshires-fleet-3964421

https://www.greenocktelegraph.co.uk/news/trendingacrossscotland/24052530.see-hilarious-scottish-gritter-names-chosen-public/

The Scottish ones are brilliant.

That's an interesting point. There's an account on Instagram that sometimes pops up on my feed and talking about what millennials remember from younger years and it's really America- centric, so a lot of the references go right over my head. The shared cultural references across Britain also often transcend generational divides.

Also - the British (as opposed to just the English) are famous for a sense of humour. This is illogical, of course. All nations have humour but I do think it's based on different things. The British has a sense of the absurd, perhaps, and also love a cock-up.

We had a German exchange student staying and she had to do a work experience job locally. When she came home after the first day, she had a face like thunder and recounted a series of disasters, mistakes, mess-ups etc which had us all in stitches. But to her it was NOT funny. I twigged that it isn't that Germans don't have a sense of humour - they just don't find rank incompetence funny, which I think the British do (Some Mothers do 'Ave'em, Dad's Army, The Office, etc etc).

Actually - my Dutch friend really doesn't have a sense of humour!

I don't think there's any evidence for that??

What about film or TV shows ,what would be good examples of British films.
Billy Elliot ,for example

One of the loveliest thing I ever saw was a lady with a hijab morris dancing at a festival with the hat on top of her hijab.

Do you mean that immigrants from the former Empire are expected to 'feel British'? I suppose I would expect people choosing to come and make their permanent home here to identify with Britain at some level. I think that's a fair expectation. I suspect the French are even more hot on this with their immigrants than we are, and Americans certainly expect it.

I find this a fascinating topic! We had a lovely Ukrainian family living with us for a year and it was only from living so closely with people from a different culture that made me really examine our own. Though culture is obviously the things that have been listed already - art, music, landscape, religion, traditions, the monarchy etc - there are so many things that I noticed as ‘British’ that I’d never put any thought into before.

We are excellent timekeepers and get worked up into a state of near panic if we think we may arrive even a minute late. Other cultures are much more relaxed over timekeeping.

We are obsessed with food hygiene and won’t eat anything that had been left out of a fridge for a couple of hours. Our guests would cook chicken from frozen, and eat from a pan of food that had been left on the hob for days. They never got sick. It made me question why we’re so hung up out it.

We would rather cut off a limb than ask someone for a favour. Because of this, we implicitly understand that if someone asks us for a favour it must mean that the world will literally stop spinning if we refuse and so we feel an enormous obligation to agree, even when we really don’t want to. Other cultures are happy to ask for things that we would consider to be the epitome of cheeky fuckery, but they’re also very happy to say “No, I don’t want to” and there are no hard feelings. As a British person, that blows my mind!

I also think a lot of our culture is regional. I’m 50 and I’ve never been privy to morris dancers, maypoles, brass bands or cricket in my lifetime. In my area, people are generally very friendly and will always help others if they can. I love this and feel prouder of my regional identity than my national identity.

This comment’s quite ignorant and (although I’m sure unintentionally) inflammatory. NOT all Northern Irish people identify as British. I speak as a Northern Irish person who is most definitely Irish.

No, I mean people expecting everyone else to feel British and consider themselves British. For example I've spent my entire life being expected to answer to that kind of person why I don't support England at football in some kind of 'British solidarity'. Nothing riles those people up more than not doing so. The independence referendum highlighted that anger as well. The entirety of Brexit. Maybe you don't think there's 'any evidence' of it but I've certainly spent the last three decades being acutely aware of it having a Scottish identity, where a national one exists, rather than a British one.

I worked in environmental education for a long time and we found through surveys that (going back 20 years now) people from ethnic minorities were less likely to come to the countryside for recreation because they felt unwelcome and isolated. I'm really glad that this seems to be changing. When I go walking in various parts of Britain now there are lots more people of immigrant heritage walking, visiting NT properties etc and generally enjoying the countryside.

These are activities and interests that can bring people together. And I love the countryside and the built heritage and if you don't make people feel they are invested, or care for these things in their hearts, no-one will bother to preserve them.

This is fabulous and I couldn’t agree more! I’d add in seasons, I love going abroad somewhere warm and sunny, but I would really miss our seasonal weather. Although I do wish the seasons would behave as they’re supposed to, it’s unseasonably warm at the moment . Everywhere is so beautiful, all the autumnal colours , but I’m still barely putting a coat on most days! It’s a worry, I guess global warming?

I don’t ‘feel’ British at all. Probably because it’s consistently conflated with Englishness. As most of the replies are testament to.

The incessant whinging and readiness to feel aggrieved at some other section of society, or a at a different nation within the UK.

Irony to the extent that is it unintelligible to others. See also dry humour
Watching the Hunt on Boxing Day
Tractor blessing service at the church in August
Our delight in charity shop find
Queuing! (Esp in Covid)
Regional terms of endearence (queen, me duck, my lover, my maid. The last if you are very old, fading out a bit I think)
The fact that I told my American cousin that my floor was older than her country.

Y iaith

Ah thanks. Yes, Brexit was traumatic and a terrible, terrible political error we'll be paying for for decades to come. It's been divisive both at home and abroad.

I totally get why you feel Scottish and not British - I feel English now, whereas I would have said British years ago. That's not meant to sound antagonistic! I respect Scottish and other Celtic nations and cultures and I get that people want to identify with their specific nation.I'm absolutely not the kind of person who thinks English and British are the same thing.

Absolutely. This is why threads on "What is English culture?" flounder and threads on "What is British culture?" soar. I've got jumped on on previous threads for saying that English culture is innately exclusive whilst British culture is innately inclusive , but I'll say it again.

Britishness encompasses everything- the lot- of what you find on these islands. Neolithic monuments, the Celtic nations, languages and customs, Vikings, Romans, all the glorious jumble of more recent ethnicities, coming together to make the Britain we have today.

On the English threads people are desperately trying to claim stuff like roast dinners and rugby and pubs...but these things are Scottish and Welsh and Cornish too, so how can they be a uniquely English thing?

No, not me. I don't really "get it" either. I'm English, not Welsh, Scottish or Irish.

These are discrete entities, not a homogeneous clump of earth.

This is a (mostly) lovely thread and a refreshing change from those thinking we should be embarrassed to be British and keep on apologising for things that happened before we were born.

I find this fascinating too.

I'm Scottish, but have lived overseas for 20+ years, in various countries so I get an insight into how other cultures are and how they view the British / English / other home nations. Probably my grumpiness upthread is partly due to living in France, where everyone British or just English-speaking (it's not very clear) are referred to as 'les Anglo-Saxons' often in a disparaging way 🙄. It's so widespread here, French friends can't understand why I (and my fellow Scots / Irish / Americans / English colleagues roll our eyes when they trot this one out - partly it's because it doesn't make any sense!!). Equally, in France brittanique = anglais. When the Queen died, she was referred to widely as 'la reine d'Angleterre'. I'm frequently described as being 'anglaise' despite having an accent thick enough to carve. At work, everyone from Scotland / England / Wales are lumped together as 'les anglaises) - Irish colleagues seem to get a pass though.

And I totally agree that one of England's greatest strengths is has been its ability to (it's hard to describe) stick its head above the parapet culturally - to push the boundaries in every way, to not be held back by its past. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the British Empire, the Industrial Revolution, London as a global powerhouse, punk and fashion - just reinventing and creating new all the time. I'm a late convert to London - I first visited when I was 50 yrs old - and it's breathtaking in terms of its history, culture, energy. The things - the ideas and stories - that have emerged from those few square miles of land? Incredible. The sense of energy and drive and 'anything goes'. The Beatles would never have emerged from Paris, the French are so conservative and have such as strong adherence to the past.

That's an area where I feel for English people because for all we talk about how Scotland, Ireland and Wales had their national identities suppressed, they also persisted in the face of that oppression, while much of English identity seems to be equated to a jingoistic British identity. I know people who have seen it in places like the armed forces even during the course of their service, and I think that really perpetuates the imperialistic perception. Although maybe it's just that the nature of Britishness itself has in some respects been pushed into following overt American jingoism.

Re the initial post I do have a fondness for the 'stiff upper lip' at times although I would consider that slightly more English than British.

Wrt food hygiene, that's a very recent thing. Previous generations in living memory preferred aged meat, didn't have fridges, would keep stuff in pantries for far longer than we do and were much less fussy about unpasteurised milk and cheese or grubby 'mis-shapen' fruit & veg.

It's interesting that in amongst all the replies about what people love about Britain very few people have actually answered the question, which is what traditions and culture make you feel you belong in Britain.

The answer for me, sadly, is virtually nothing - and it's certainly not a chalk cliff. I was born to a British father under the British flag in a former British colony. I also had a Portuguese mother, and Portuguese citizenship from birth. I moved around a bit between current and former British colonies in Africa and Asia as a child so ended up at boarding school in England and have made a life here.

I still speak English with a fairly obvious Rhodesian accent but as long as I keep my mouth closed I can easily pass as white British and from behind my fairly convincing disguise I can rarely see past the sheer hostility - and duplicity - towards outsiders, no matter how British they actually are. I myself am viewed as foreign and unworthy when it suits locals, but as quintessentially British when that suits them instead - often in the context of people who are exactly like me except for the colour of their skin or the shape of their eyes.

A PP mentioned that Germans don't find rank incompetence funny. Neither do I. I don't find illteracy or innumeracy to be a source of pride. I am horrified at the lack of authenticity that plagues so many Brits, particularly when it comes to money, ostentatious displays of wealth, and perceptions of it.

I grew up with domestic staff, as well as ones working in my parents' businesses, and they were viewed as family. Service staff here are absolutely not: the class system here is designed to exclude people, not make them feel they belong.

The big thing though is the unstirring faith in British exceptionalism: the idea that 'British' is so innately superior that we cannot take lessons from anywhere alse in the world, and to suggest so is seen as unpatriotic, subversive, or downright stupid. That never makes any outsider feel they belong.