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.

My 15 year old has so far proved to be quite resistant to finding a proper part time job, but quite adept at flogging stuff on Vinted, so I will be encouraging him to go to the jumble sale to find stuff he can flip 😆

It's what I did at his age- I had a little second hand stall in a flea market, stocked with jumble sale finds. God I miss the 1970s Indian cotton printed peasant dresses and velvet blazers I used to find armfuls of!

Oh GOD yes... bloody awful!
Usually said by a prime specimen of a fugly and without the least bit of irony or self-awareness.

The feeling that there are grown-up, fundamentally good and honest people in charge. Probably a childish illusion.

Yes they usually looked like a boiled corpse! And were saying it about really nice looking girls

Interestingly the Norfolk Turkey is now considered a local variety. Its wild ancestors have been exterminated and Turkey breeding in America has caused them to morph so far away from their origins that Americans consider the Norfolk Turkey a heritage breed. They’ve started taking them back to United States.

The Portuguese introduced tomatoes and potatoes to Italy, India and China.

Well, how much time do you spend on Japanese or Indian forums, where those things would be discussed?! For differing reasons I can imagine that there is a lively debate about national identity in both of those countries right now.

And what do you mean by "British" ancestry? Beaker people, Pictish, Dumnonii, Roman, Viking, Anglo Saxon?? And where's the cut off point? Do you include Huguenots, who arrived in the 1600s (Nigel Farage's ancestors, I believe 😬).Ashkenazi Jews, who I think started to arrive in the 1700s (happy to be corrected on that one). Black Africans, of whom there has been a trickle since at least the 1700s? Irish, Chinese and "Lascars" (Bengali seamen) in the 1800s?

I haven’t felt that for a long time.

A great way of putting it.

There used to be a quote (I think from a poem) which means much the same: “What does he know of England who only England knows?”

Is that Kipling? My grandmother used to read Kipling to us.

It is, yes.

Battle of Cable Street! The East End coming together to protect its Jewish community from the fascists.

All those people married into the existing population and contributed to our history and ancestry. The British Isles had remarkably little change in population for well over 1,000 years. All those people blended together. On average, if you take an English or Scottish person then they test as 6th cousins because, from 597AD until after the reformation, no one could marry anyone more closely related than a sixth cousin (sharing a great great great great great grandparent).

Well, what do you mean by ‘Irish’? Technically nobody is ‘Irish’ - Irish people today are descendants of Europeans who made their way to what we now know as ‘Ireland’ before it was even ‘Ireland’. And what do you mean by Ashkenazi Jews? Most ‘Ashkenazi Jews’ are not 100% Ashkenazi Jewish, but have a mixed heritage with DNA from various areas.

Oh wait, I forgot this ‘logic’ only applies to British people - I’ll shut up now.

This is the sort of day which we should remind ourselves we are incredibly lucky to be able to experience. Lovely ordinary, inexpensive, cosy, peaceful things which we take for granted or even disparage (not me!). Millions of people in the world have vastly different lives and with all its problems and imperfections to be born in Britain is still a huge blessing.

Well I had to stop typing at some point, didn't I 😆.

Which 1000 years, was that the Bronze Age?

The sixth cousin law is interesting- was that an Anglo Saxon one?? Although I'm guessing it didn't apply to royalty ...😬

It’s and it’s not surprising you had to stop typing once you had only queried British heritage not any others?

Oh, I've thought of another one.
Union and chapel banners.

Well, that is the subject of our thread, is it not?

By the way, I notice that you never answered my question: where do you draw the line?

I don’t draw any lines. You seem to want it to be a tickbox exercise so you can do a ‘gotcha’.

Fish and Chips at the seaside.

With the chip-nicking gulls!

Sea side holidays with sand in your sarnies
Church fetes
Football and cricket
Pomp and ceremony- Im not particularly particularly a royalist but the Queens funeral was spectacular
Morris dancers
May Day
Queuing
Chippies
Tea
Tea and toast
cooked breakfast
Cream/ afternoon tea
The pub
Moaning about the weather
The arts
The landscape
The King's speech
Carols at King's
Trip to see Father Christmas
Nativity plays
Carol services
Harvest festivals

Thank you CC , I spent a bit of the morning chatting to a new friend who was a midwife in the middle east. She cannot believe the calm, peacefulness of a (leafy, always leafy on MNet) suburban, English weekend.
I listened in horror to her tales of childbirth in the dark with a couple of sheets and a bucket of water... usually in the morgue because it was the most missile proof.

We often cannot contemplate what makes our life so good until someone comes along with a horrifying, but matter of fact story of a truly different world.

Fun fact.

Some super evangelical churches won't permit evergreens/Christmas trees in the bidding due to Celtic roots and indication of Pan.

Same reason some Christians won't knock on wood (invoking Pan plus superstition).