Does Welsh Count ?

I sit by my front window watching trainloads (literally!) of people heading downtown for the St. Patrick's Day parade. All are decked in green -- green plastic derbies, green vests, green antennae (Well, what do _you_ call them? You know, those little bobbing things that make a person look like a cartoon alien.)... I feel so alone... so left out... so... un-ethnic! Now, I'm sure it's true that a few of those greenies-for-a-day are not really Irish. There might be a Polish ringer or two, an Italian, or even a German left over from the old days. And it's also true that people whose own ethnic group does not provide sufficient nourishment -- or fun -- will gravitate toward, and adopt, a _new_ ethnic group -- typically, the one that has the best parties, or great music, or cooks the best food. (I think we can eliminate the Irish option on that last point, eh?) (I went to an "Irish potluck" once where the food was universally dreary, tasteless, and in short supply. Finally, I said to my wife, "Oh! It's the famine! No wonder!") We all know people who have wandered off their own ethnic reservation to fervently embrace some other culture. I'm not talking about marrying into a culture here; that is a different phenomenon -- with, one hopes, a bit of mutuality involved. No, I'm talking about people who flee the impoverishment of their childhood and head for the bright lights, colorful costumes, and heady scents of some group that has not deracinated themselves in order to "fit in".

My own case is, I believe, typical of Americans of a certain background. I come from, on three sides (as nearly as can be determined), New England Yankee stock. Not bad per se, but we have to remember that the fountainhead of that stock was the Puritans, and a more life-hating, judgmental group of people can scarcely be found in all of world history. Even the severest ascetic stalking through a cloister was at least willing to allow the ordinary people their simple pleasures, but the Puritan has ever been infected by the "fear that someone, somewhere, might be having fun", to approximate a quote from, I believe, H. L. Mencken. The Puritans may have been the first prominent ethnic/cultural group we know of to, as much as humanly possible, engage in auto-deracination, i.e. the voluntary shedding of all cultural connections with their own past or with any of the other groups among which they had lived. It was, I'm sure, considered a kind of purification process -- to shun the things of this world, and trivial pleasures, in order to focus on "things above". So there they stood, clad in their coarse, dark clothing and as dour as mules, with the chill salt breeze whipping off Massachusetts Bay, searching for some way to make life even more miserable, and therefore more noble. But what resulted was a kind of pettiness, scrupulousity, and deep suspicion of anything that was different. The Puritan would shy away from the sound of laughter and music the way a vampire shies from the Crucifix. He would prohibit holidays, but insist that people sit around like cigar-store Indians for the entire sabbath -- after, that is, they had put up with a 4-hour sermon in the meeting house. And of course, he was subject to the most extreme fits of hysteria and paranoia, as witness the Salem Witch Trials and others of their kind. Now, from the Catholic point of view, denial of the world -- asceticism and contemplation -- are considered quite admirable for the few, i.e. for those who have the strength of character to take on those qualities and use them as the basis for a style of life, and a _meaningful_ sacrifice. But to expect it of the common man on a daily basis would be sheer folly, and it is rightly seen as such.

The problem for the descendant of the Puritan culture (or anti-culture) is, how to regain the holistic, organic feel of being in one's own rich cultural milieu when, in fact, that culture never existed? "If the salt should lose its savor, whereof shall it be salted?" It's like being born on a spaceship. We might want, with all fervor, to escape from the Permanent Puritan Penitentiary, where the sun never shines, and the song of the turtledove is not heard. But how? So we race about trying on costumes -- masks, if you will. We cook Italian food, watch Swedish movies, listen to Indian music, wear Hawaiian shirts, live in high-tech yurts. We are, in effect, cultural orphans, at home nowhere but camping out everywhere. The "fun" may be perfectly pleasant, but it is contrived, and a bit artificial. We become like the "spoon guy" who one finds at every folk festival. You've seen this character. He's the one who's not good enough to be up on stage, so he brings a pair of spoons along and stands at the side of the crowd providing very ragged and aggravating percussion effects that are supposed to somehow enhance the value of what is going on up front. (But I've never seen this guy get kicked out. Why is that?) In short, we become, in effect, cultural parasites -- hangers-on, hitchhikers.

Now, I should comment, at this point, that occasionally a cultural hitchhiker will actually get pretty darn good at doing whatever he, or she, does in the context of their non-native culture. So yes, we have American sumo wrestlers, British sitar players, Scotch-Irish French chefs, and Jewish old-time country fiddlers. And maybe that satisfies. But who will claim that it's as good as the real thing?

Oh yes -- that 25% of me that is not New England Yankee is Western New York Welsh. So I've got some of that crazy Celtic blood in me too, lads. Bartender, another pint all around!