Holidays and Cultural Differences
Jul. 2nd, 2006 02:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
There are some differences between the US and the UK that take a while to appreciate. For instance, there's the whole business of holidays.
In England (I think Scotland is different; I'm not sure about Wales and Northern Ireland) the public, or 'bank' holidays are: New Year's Day; Good Friday, Easter Monday; May Day (celebrated the first Monday in May); Spring Bank Holiday (last Monday in May); August Bank Holiday (last Monday in August); Christmas and Boxing Day (the day after Christmas). The religious-origin ones are obvious, but when people over here ask me what the others are for, I mostly have to say that they aren't for anything, they're just a day off. (I suppose May Day -- a relatively recent addition to the canon -- does have significance for some, and Spring Bank Holiday used to be Whit Monday and celebrated with outings to the countryside by the urban working poor.) In my childhood, none of them except Christmas had any great significance other than as days, embedded in longer school holidays, when the shops were closed, there was little public transport, and it was pretty much impossible to go anywhere or do anything.
The US, on the other hand, has a dozen or so named holidays, each with its own significance, many of them with their own color schemes and merchandise. Some of them mean more to some groups than others, obviously, but they're all woven into the culture and come with their particular advertizing and news coverage. As an outsider without readily-available family, I think of them as shopping holidays and non-shopping (or 'family' ) holidays, but mostly as a chance to catch up on housework. (I don't think I've ever quite dared to ask whether July 4th comes under shopping or non-shopping. I do remember spending it once working from home, and well-nigh crippling myself by sitting at the laptop for most of the day.)
The other interesting thing is that the British, given a tradition associated with a particular date or time of year, will happily stretch it out over weeks; if we had 4th of July fireworks there'd be a non-stop barrage from the preceding to the following weekend, at least. Americans, on the other hand, keep their holidays much more tightly contained; no-one goes trick-or-treating the weekend before Halloween, for instance.
In England (I think Scotland is different; I'm not sure about Wales and Northern Ireland) the public, or 'bank' holidays are: New Year's Day; Good Friday, Easter Monday; May Day (celebrated the first Monday in May); Spring Bank Holiday (last Monday in May); August Bank Holiday (last Monday in August); Christmas and Boxing Day (the day after Christmas). The religious-origin ones are obvious, but when people over here ask me what the others are for, I mostly have to say that they aren't for anything, they're just a day off. (I suppose May Day -- a relatively recent addition to the canon -- does have significance for some, and Spring Bank Holiday used to be Whit Monday and celebrated with outings to the countryside by the urban working poor.) In my childhood, none of them except Christmas had any great significance other than as days, embedded in longer school holidays, when the shops were closed, there was little public transport, and it was pretty much impossible to go anywhere or do anything.
The US, on the other hand, has a dozen or so named holidays, each with its own significance, many of them with their own color schemes and merchandise. Some of them mean more to some groups than others, obviously, but they're all woven into the culture and come with their particular advertizing and news coverage. As an outsider without readily-available family, I think of them as shopping holidays and non-shopping (or 'family' ) holidays, but mostly as a chance to catch up on housework. (I don't think I've ever quite dared to ask whether July 4th comes under shopping or non-shopping. I do remember spending it once working from home, and well-nigh crippling myself by sitting at the laptop for most of the day.)
The other interesting thing is that the British, given a tradition associated with a particular date or time of year, will happily stretch it out over weeks; if we had 4th of July fireworks there'd be a non-stop barrage from the preceding to the following weekend, at least. Americans, on the other hand, keep their holidays much more tightly contained; no-one goes trick-or-treating the weekend before Halloween, for instance.
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