by Erin Moore
But regardless of their different political leanings, something Americans have in common is an abiding patriotism that is centered on the flag. All Americans grow up pledging allegiance to the flag each school day. In my elementary school, the pledge was led by the principal over a tinny loudspeaker so that the words all ran together, except for the part about God: “Ipledgeallegiancetotheflagoftheunitedstatesofamerica [audible breath] andtotherepublicforwhichitstands, One Nation [breath] Under GOD, INDIVISIBLE! Withlibertynjusticeferall.” Each classroom had its own flag, right up front—as does every public building in America.
Americans’ flag-waving tendencies baffle the English, who generally don’t go in for that particular flavor of nationalism. They have no equivalent ritual to the Pledge of Allegiance, though like Americans, they do sing their national anthem, “God Save the Queen,” at official events. England also has a similar North–South cultural divide—but whereas Yankees are considered the cultural elites in America, in England the cultural and political elites are usually based in the south. The north of England is less populous and less wealthy than the south, which is the seat of government power, making policies for the country as a whole. This can lead to resentment, especially when southern politicians are seen to be out of touch with northern realities. Condescension toward northern accents and cities persists, with southern accents and cities considered “posher” than northern ones. The north has historically been the industrial heart of the country—represented by the “dark satanic mills” in one of England’s most popular hymns, “Jerusalem” (which Americans may remember from the movie Chariots of Fire). It seems inevitable that the south would appear overprivileged by comparison, but there isn’t any one word that sums this up in the rest of the country.
The word Yankee may represent different things to different people, but if you ask an American to describe an individual who is a Yankee, you will get a cross between the caricature of Uncle Sam and a kind of pilgrim soul, given to aphorisms like:
“The world is your cow. But you have to do the milking.”
“Take care of the minutes and the hours will take care of themselves.”
“In New England we have nine months of winter and three months of darned poor sledding.”
The characteristics traditionally ascribed to true Yankees—including shrewdness, industry, economy (with words as well as money), individualism, practicality, ingenuity, dry wit, and stoicism—are qualities that have also been ascribed to the English. Unfortunately these old, good values are in short supply everywhere now. It may be true that Americans who embody these characteristics, who call themselves Yankees as a point of pride, have more in common with old England than they do with the rest of America. Yet I would argue that today’s England has more in common, culturally, with the rest of America than with the England of old. But if that’s too controversial, even the most irascible Yankee might agree with Frances Trollope, who had her own idea—yet another—of what it means to be one:
The Yankee: In acuteness, cautiousness, industry and perseverance, he resembles the Scotch. In habits of frugal neatness, he resembles the Dutch . . . but in frank admission, and superlative admiration of all his own peculiarities, a Yankee is nothing else on earth but himself.
Skint
In which the money-talk taboo buckles under the weight of the recent recession.
Neither Americans nor the English like talking about money. It is a cliché on both sides of the Atlantic that most people, rich or poor, would prefer to talk about their sex lives than the contents of their wallets. Both societies equate money with power, status, prestige, esteem, and self-worth. So it isn’t easy to say the words we say when we don’t have enough: broke and skint. Skint comes from the word skinned, meaning flayed, exposed. It is an intense and visceral word, and while it means the same as broke, it sounds much harsher.
Americans and the English are raised to believe that talking about money is impolite. But their similar taboos against money talk had very different origins. In England, the money-talk taboo originated with the class system. To the upper class, whose fortunes consisted of inherited property, there was always a stigma against being “in trade,” or having to work to earn money. One (ideally) already had all of one’s money, and if not, one could never be considered a gentleman, no matter how rich. This may sound absurd to us today, but nevertheless it is one reason why most English people of all classes, even now, consider it vulgar to talk about money or show too much interest in it. Everyone keeps up the polite assumption that they all have just enough—to do otherwise would be not only potentially divisive, but immodest, reductive, intrusive, and embarrassing.
Kate Fox, an English anthropologist who has studied her countrymen, takes them to task for this: “It is clear that much of all this English squeamishness about money is sheer hypocrisy. The English are no less naturally ambitious, greedy, selfish or avaricious than any other nation—we just have more and stricter rules requiring us to hide, deny and repress these tendencies . . . The modesty we display is generally false, and our apparent reluctance to emphasize status differences conceals an acute consciousness of these differences.”
This is not new. It was played for laughs by Jane Austen in the early 1800s. You can’t move far in her novels without finding out who has merely “500 a year” and who has been reduced to driving around in a gig rather than a phaeton. It’s taken for granted that money is unequal and that money matters—especially in matchmaking—though the characters who are seen to be openly ambitious rarely win at this game. Austen herself kept careful records of how much money she earned from her writing, and never married. But it’s interesting that in her books, the greatest romantic outcome of all is to marry, for love, someone who also just happens to be rich. This is the case when Emma Woodhouse marries George Knightley and when Elizabeth Bennet bags Mr. Darcy. Elizabeth’s worry, upon telling her mother, is that Mrs. Bennet’s jubilation will prove embarrassing. This worry is not unfounded. Mrs. Bennet crows:
“Oh! my sweetest Lizzy! how rich and how great you will be! What pin-money, what jewels, what carriages you will have! . . . A house in town! Every thing that is charming!” This was enough to prove that her approbation need not be doubted: and Elizabeth, rejoicing that such an effusion was heard only by herself, soon went away. But before she had been three minutes in her own room, her mother followed her.
“My dearest child,” she cried, “I can think of nothing else! Ten thousand a year, and very likely more! ’Tis as good as a Lord.”
This was a sad omen of what her mother’s behavior to the gentleman himself might be; and Elizabeth found that, though in the certain possession of his warmest affection, and secure of her relations’ consent, there was still something to be wished for.
In America, being in trade has never been stigmatized. It is an article of faith that “everyone is in sales!” Americans expect to “always be closing,” whatever their jobs. Being self-made is, if anything, considered more honorable and better than being an heir. The rich worry about their children not having to make their own way in the world and try to instill character by other means. (A whole industry has built up around this—wealthy children are sent to summer sailing camps to learn self-reliance, or Outward Bound drops them in the middle of the wilderness to fend for themselves; some even endure unpaid internships at Vogue.) Americans are competitive, so you would think money would be an easy topic of conversation. But it isn’t that simple. It’s actually very difficult to talk about something that you believe reflects your worth. America is a society with less of a social safety net than England, where socialism of any kind (socialized medicine, welfare) is practically equated with communism by some, and resented. The trouble with Americans’ self-sufficient attitude is that it can engender a lack of sympathy with those living in poverty—an estimated 15 percent—mostly through no fault of their own. So as long as we don’t talk about money, we can pretend this inequality is no
t a problem. The rich want to see themselves as deserving, and the poor don’t want to be looked down on for their bad luck. “Equal opportunity” is a nice ideal, but it doesn’t really reflect reality in America, or in England, today.
Although England and America each have their own measures of poverty, a slightly higher percentage of people—about 20 percent of the population—falls into the category in England. A Channel 4 documentary, called Benefits Street, dealt with the problem of long-term unemployment and welfare dependence on James Turner Street in Birmingham, where up to 90 percent of residents receive benefits. It was controversial—condescending to its subjects, who complained they had been misled about the aim of the program. Others have been more successful at putting a sympathetic face to the problem. In 2011, Jack Monroe, on her blog, “A Girl Called Jack,” described her struggle to feed herself and her toddler son on ten pounds per week in a post called “Hunger Hurts”: “Poverty isn’t just having no heating, or not quite enough food, or unplugging your fridge and turning your hot water off. It’s . . . not cool, and it’s not something that MPs on a salary of £65k a year plus expenses can understand, let alone our PM who states that we’re all in this together. Poverty is the sinking feeling when your small boy finishes his one weetabix and says ‘more mummy, bread and jam please mummy’ as you’re wondering whether to take the TV or the guitar to the pawn shop first, and how to tell him that there is no bread or jam.” Monroe has since become a food columnist for The Guardian and written a cookbook of budget recipes. Having learned home economy the hard way, Monroe is a welcome voice in a country where recipes in bestselling cookbooks tend to call for a couple of teaspoons each of expensive and exotic ingredients.
Since the recession, Americans and the English have relaxed the money-talk taboo. Saving and economizing have become viable topics of conversation. There are still things they won’t talk about: salary, for one. Even among bankers, who talk about other people’s money all day long, there is a strong prohibition on discussions of individual salaries. (This is encouraged by managers, who have a vested interest in their employees’ ignorance of discrepancies in their pay.) House prices were once considered fair game for discussion, but with the mortgage crisis this has changed. Once, complaining about the size of your mortgage was a stealth brag, since what you could borrow was thought to be indicative of your worth. Not anymore. Money may not be anyone’s favorite topic of conversation, but it has taken on a new urgency. People are more likely to speak up about being skint or broke. Maybe because they have realized that they aren’t alone, and that it isn’t something shameful to hide when many of their friends and colleagues are experiencing the same difficulties. Losing some of their money through little or no fault of their own made a lot of people less likely to think of the poor as lazy or undeserving, and more likely to reexamine their attitudes.
Cuts to England’s welfare program have meant that England, like America, is beginning to develop a network of local food banks. People are taking pride in being able to help their neighbors, even though many feel their government has let them down. The welfare state in England is not what it once was. In his annual address to the Lord Mayor’s Banquet at London’s Guildhall in 2013, Prime Minister David Cameron said that only a smaller state and a “bigger and more prosperous private sector” could prompt an economic recovery.
He called for a “fundamental culture change in our country” to champion “that typically British, entrepreneurial, buccaneering spirit . . . that rewards people with the ambition to make things, sell things and create jobs for others up and down the country . . . We need to do more with less. Not just now, but permanently.” He made this speech while wearing a tuxedo and white tie, in front of a room full of similarly clad worthies, who may have been nonplussed by what, at first, sounded suspiciously like an exhortation to go into trade. Luckily, he wasn’t talking about them.
Crimbo
In which we explore the pagan side of Christmas with our mutual friend Charles Dickens.
Both Americans and the English complain that the materialistic hype of Christmas begins earlier every year, but Americans don’t know the half of it. Without the speed bumps of Halloween and Thanksgiving, England is free to slide straight from the late-summer sales into the roiling commercial bacchanal of Jesus’s birthday. Grocery stores begin selling mince pies and Christmas puddings in August. Department stores unveil their seasonal wares in September. Carols may be heard across the land as early as October. So this is Christmas. By December, the English are sick of it, and who can blame them?
“The reason for the season,” as pious Americans remind us, has ceased to be the focus in either country. Americans’ shorthand for Christmas crosses Him right out: Xmas. This has not caught on in England. The English are known for their inventive nicknaming, which makes American attempts at abbreviation appear quaint by comparison. Without some strong context, it would be hard to know what people were talking about half the time. In a country where Paul McCartney is known as “Macca” and Prince Charles as “Chazza,” imagine what Jesus is in for. No, don’t. The silly nickname the English have invented for Christmas is Crimbo. It sounds like an antisocial act that could get you ten to fifteen in a maximum-security gaol (pronounced “jail”—the pokey, the clink, prison). Crimbo is more irreverent and less widespread than Xmas, but it’s also a word more likely to be verbalized, and when it is, it sounds a bit vulgar.
No one calls his grandmother to ask what she’s doing for Crimbo, but among friends, at the office, and especially with regard to the crasser aspects of Christmas—the shopping, the parties, the drinking, and the romantic opportunism—it’s Crimbo all the way. Leigh Francis, star of the popular sketch comedy show Bo’ Selecta! hit #3 on the charts with “Proper Crimbo,” a song about what “Crimbo” is all about: “Put up your Christmas tree (proper Crimbo) / So excited you might wee (proper Crimbo) . . . come sit on my knee / Got gifts for y’all what you got for me?” Ho, ho, ho indeed.
An abbreviation like Crimbo serves a strong need that the English have to appear that they don’t care all that much. They are far less willing than Americans to declare their intention, unironically, to have a good time, or to put pressure on themselves to do so. Besides, imagine how you would feel if you were routinely subjected to Christmas carols for the last four months of each year. Enough, already! The urge to “big up” Christmas coexists with the conviction that it is likely to be disappointing in the end, so why not keep expectations low and preserve the possibility of being happily surprised? As a result, many people do report having a better time than they expected, at least, as one friend quipped, if they can remember it the next day.
The Christmas machine is so well oiled that some may be surprised to learn that the traditions of Christmas—and the accompanying anxiety to make it the most wonderful time of the year—are a relatively recent innovation, at least in a country with more than 240 years of history. One man in particular has had a greater influence on the way Christmas is celebrated in England than any other: Charles Dickens. Some have gone so far as to say he invented Christmas, though Dickens himself admitted his treatment of the subject had been partly inspired by the American author Washington Irving’s lavish depiction of an English country Christmas, published in The Sketch Book in 1820, more than twenty years before A Christmas Carol.
Dickens’s novel enshrined a secular and extravagant ideal that continues to inform most Christmas imagery and advertising today: the family gathered around a feast of turkey and trimmings, the celebration of all that is good and generous, the giving of gifts, and the potentially transformative nature of the holiday itself. If Bob Cratchit can have a proper Crimbo, why can’t we? Even Ebenezer Scrooge eventually acquires the holiday spirit, so that “it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us!” (No pressure.) Still, it is worth remembering that A Christmas Carol, while r
emembered for its joyful ending, was billed as a ghost story. The English embrace the dark side of Christmas in a way that Americans do not. They also really know how to laugh it off.
That’s why no chapter on Crimbo would be complete without an attempt to explain Panto. That’s short for pantomime, which the English essayist Max Beerbohm once described as “an art form specially adapted to English genius.” Pantomime has been around, in one form or another, since the Middle Ages. Its current form can be described, pretentiously, as combining the traditions of the British music hall with Italian commedia dell’arte. But it’s harder to describe in plain terms what Panto is and what it means to the English. Andrzej Lukowski, the theatre editor for Time Out London, has said, “Frankly, pantos are so weird . . . I’ve never managed to explain what they are to somebody who didn’t already know.”
All pantos share certain conventions. There will be a plot based on a fairy tale or well-known story—Cinderella, Aladdin, Peter Pan, Puss in Boots, and Jack and the Beanstalk are evergreen. There are archetypal characters, such as the Pantomime Dame, usually played by an older male actor in drag; the Principal Boy, usually played by a young actress in tights; a frothy Fairy Godmother type; and a hammy Villain. The audience will expect big musical numbers, double entendre and innuendo that fly over the heads of children in the audience, slapstick, and, above all, crowd participation. Breaking the fourth wall is standard practice in Panto. Audience members (usually children) will be called up to the stage, often asked to solve a problem or find something or someone who has gone missing. Those left in their seats will help by yelling out, as one, catchphrases like, “HE’S BEHIND YOU!” The actors will shout back, “OH NO, HE ISN’T,” and the audience will respond, “OH YES, HE IS!” It gets extremely raucous, but within certain boundaries that everyone knows and respects. To the uninitiated, Panto can seem like an inside joke on a national scale. It is incredibly silly, but it is also a serious business, lighting up the darkest season of the year.