Watching the English

by Kate Fox

  The practice of lighting bonfires and burning effigies in early November is another pagan one – common at ‘fire festivals’ welcoming the winter (the effigies represented the old year) – adapted in the seventeenth century to commemorate the defeat of Guy Fawkes’s plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament. It is still also known as Bonfire Night and Fireworks Night,124 and is now celebrated with firework-parties over a period of at least a fortnight, rather than just on the night of 5 November. Valentine’s Day – cards, flowers, chocolate – is a sanitised Christian version of the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia, originally held on 15 February, a much more raunchy celebration of the ‘coming of spring’ (in other words, the start of the mating season) designed to ensure the fertility of fields, flocks and people.

  Many people think of Easter as one of the few genuinely Christian calendricals, but even its name is not Christian, being a variant of Eostre, the Saxon goddess of spring, and many of our Easter customs – eggs and so on – are based on pagan fertility rites. Some otherwise non-practising Christians may go to a church service on Easter Sunday, and even some totally non-religious people ‘give something up’ for the traditional fasting period of Lent (it’s a popular time to restart one’s New Year’s Resolution diet, which somehow lost its momentum by the third week in January).

  As calendrical punctuation marks go, these are mostly just commas. Easter qualifies as a semi-colon, as it involves a day’s holiday from work, and is used as a reference point – people talk about doing things ‘by Easter’ or ‘after Easter’, or something happening ‘around Easter’. Valentine’s Day also just about counts as a semi-colon, although we don’t get a day off work, as it plays a significant part in our courtship and mating practices (significant enough to cause a big peak in the suicide rates, anyway).

  In addition to these ‘mainstream’ national calendricals, every English ethnic and religious minority has its own annual punctuation marks: the Hindu Diwali and Janmashtami; the Sikh Diwali and Vaisakhi; Muslim Ramadan, Eid-ul-Fitr and Al-Hijrah; Jewish Hanukkah, Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashana, to name just the first few that immediately spring to mind. And every English subculture has its own calendricals – its own annual tribal gatherings and festivals. These include the upper-class ‘Season’, of which the Royal Ascot race-meeting, the Henley Regatta and the Wimbledon tennis championships (always abbreviated to just ‘Ascot, Henley and Wimbledon’) are the principal events. The racing fraternity have the Grand National, the Cheltenham Festival and the Derby in addition to Ascot; Goths have their annual convention at Whitby in Yorkshire; New Agers, other counter-culture groups and young music-lovers have their festival at Glastonbury; modern druids have the summer solstice at Stonehenge; the literati have Hay-on-Wye; opera-lovers have Glyndebourne and Garsington; dog-lovers have Crufts; bikers have the BMF Show at Peterborough; horsey folk have Badminton, Hickstead and the Horse of the Year Show; and so on. There are thousands of these subcultural calendricals, far too many to list, but each one, to its adherents, may be much more important than Christmas. And I have only mentioned the ‘Christmases’ – every subculture has its own minor calendricals as well, its own semicolons and commas.

  But even the minor punctuation marks are necessary: we need these special days, these little mini-festivals, to provide breaks from our routine and give structure to our year – just as regular mealtimes structure our days. That’s ‘we humans’, of course, not just ‘we English’, but we English do seem to have a particular need for regular ‘time out’ from our rigid social controls.

  Holidays . . .

  Which brings me rather neatly to the concept of holidays,125 and especially the summer holiday. I am including this under ‘calendrical rites’ (although nit-pickers might argue that technically it is neither) as it is an annually recurring event of possibly even greater cultural significance than Christmas, which in my book makes it calendrical, and a ‘liminal’ ritual conforming in important respects to the pattern identified by van Gennep as characteristic of rites of passage, which in my book makes it a ‘rite’. (And this is my book, so I can call things calendrical rites if I choose.)

  In terms of punctuation marks (I can labour metaphors too, if I wish), the summer holiday is an ellipsis (. . .), the three dots indicating passage of time, or something unspoken, or a significant pause or break in the narrative flow, often with a suggestion of mystery attached. I’ve always felt there was something decidedly liminal about those three dots. There is certainly something very liminal about the summer holiday: this two- or three-week break is a time outside regular, prosaic existence, a special time when the normal controls, routines and restraints are suspended, and we feel a sense of liberation from the workaday world. We are free from the exigencies of work, school or housekeeping routines – this is playtime, ‘free’ time, time that is ‘ours’. On holiday, we say, ‘your time is your own’.

  Summer holidays are an alternative reality: if we can, we go to another country; we dress differently; we eat special, more indulgent food (‘Go on, have another ice-cream, you’re on holiday!’) – and we behave differently. The English on their summer holiday are more relaxed, more sociable, more spontaneous, less hidebound and uptight. In a national study conducted by my SIRC colleagues, ‘being more sociable’ was one of the three most common responses when people were asked what they most associated with summer, the other two being ‘pub gardens’ and ‘barbecues’, which are both essentially also about sociability. We speak of holidays as a time to ‘let our hair down’, ‘have fun’, ‘let off steam’, ‘unwind’, ‘go a bit mad’. We may even talk to strangers. The English don’t get much more liminal than that.

  English holidays – summer holidays in particular – are governed by the same laws of cultural remission as carnivals and festivals. Like ‘celebration’, ‘holiday’ is a magic word. As with festivals, however, cultural remission does not mean an unbridled, anarchic free-for-all, but rather a regulated sort of rowdiness, a selective spontaneity, in which specified inhibitions are shed in a prescribed, conventional manner.

  The English on holiday do not suddenly stop being English. Even abroad, many English holidaymakers insist on eating the same food, drinking the same tea and beer and playing the same games that they enjoy at home. And many holiday resorts, particularly in Spain, pander to this insularity, providing fish-and-chip shops, tea-rooms, pubs, bingo, and other familiar comforts – essentially offering England in a warmer, sunnier setting, with maybe one Paella Night or a bit of flamenco and sangria for a little frisson of exotic excitement. Our defining qualities do not magically disappear either: even among the minority who take more adventurous holidays, behaviour is still dictated by the ingrained rules of humour, hypocrisy, modesty, class-consciousness, fair play, social dis-ease and so on.

  But we do let our guard down a bit. The cultural remission of holiday law does not cure us of our social dis-ease, but the symptoms are to some extent ‘in remission’. We do not miraculously become any more socially skilled, of course, but we do become more socially inclined – more open, less buttoned-up. This is not always a good thing, or even a pleasant sight, as the native inhabitants of some of our favoured foreign holiday resorts will testify. Some of us are quite frankly nicer when we are not shedding our inhibitions all over the place, along with our trousers, our bras, the contents of our stomachs and our dignity. As I keep pointing out, our famous polite reserve and our almost equally renowned loutish obnoxiousness are two sides of the same coin: for some of us, the magic word ‘holiday’ has an unfortunate tendency to flip that coin.

  For good or ill, the liminal laws of carnival/holiday time apply to minor calendricals such as bank holidays as well – and even to ordinary weekends. (Some members of non-mainstream subculture tribes, for instance, may be able to adopt their ‘alternative’ dress, lifestyle and persona only during this weekend time-out. The more dedicated, or simply more fortunate, full-time members of these tribes refer to the part-timers rather dismissively as, for
example, ‘weekend Goths’ or ‘weekend bikers’.) Evenings and lunch-hours are also mini-remissions, and even coffee- and tea-breaks can be – what’s even smaller? – nanoremissions, perhaps. Little oases of time-out; tiny, almost homeopathic doses of therapeutic liminality.

  We talk about ‘getting back to reality’ or ‘back to the real world’ after a holiday, and part of the meaning and function of holidays is to define that ‘real world’ more sharply. Holidays and mini-remissions do not challenge or subvert the norms and laws that are sometimes suspended for their duration; quite the opposite: holidays highlight and reinforce these rules. By labelling holidays as ‘different’, ‘special’ and ‘unreal’, we remind ourselves of what is ‘normal’ and ‘real’. By breaking the rules in a conscious, structured manner, we throw these important norms into sharp relief, and ensure our own obedience to them back in ‘real’ time. Every year, English holiday-makers, sighing at the prospect of ‘getting back to reality’, comfort each other with the wise words: ‘But, of course, if it were like this all the time, we wouldn’t appreciate it.’ Quite true. But the reverse is also true: holidays help us to appreciate the structure and certainties – and even the restraints – of our ‘normal’ life and routines. The English can only take so much liminality. By the end of the summer holidays, we have had enough of indulgence and excess, and yearn for a bit of moderation.

  Other Transitions – Intimate Rites and Irregular Verbs

  Decade-marking birthdays and wedding anniversaries, house-warmings, retirement celebrations and workplace ‘leaving dos’ are usually smaller and more informal affairs than the big life-cycle transitions described earlier, although some may be no less important to the individuals concerned.

  Retirement celebrations and ‘leaving dos’ that take place at work – where those involved may not be close friends of the person whose departure is being ritually marked – are the most likely to be characterised by the usual Englishnesses: social dis-ease symptoms, medicated with incessant humour and alcohol; polite egalitarianism masking class obsessions; modest, self-deprecating speeches full of indirect boasts and veiled put-downs; moaning rituals; jokey presentation of gifts; drunken ‘disinhibition’; awkward handshakes, clumsy back-pats and uneasy embraces.

  Truly private rites of passage – birthdays, anniversaries, house-warmings and retirements celebrated with family and one’s very closest friends – are somewhat less predictable, apart from a few generic customs and conventions, such as cakes, balloons, singing, special food, drink and possibly toasts. These much more intimate rites are generally less socially challenging, and thus less awkward and stilted, than the bigger or more ‘public’ transitions. In private, among people we know very well, the English are quite capable of warmth, openness, intimacy and the full gamut of human emotions associated with friendship and family ties. Some of us are warmer and more open than others, but that is a matter of individual differences in personality, and has little or nothing to do with national character.

  Even at these very private events, however, the most fundamental ‘laws of Englishness’ apply: we obey the humour rules, for example, particularly the anti-earnestness rule, much as we obey the law of gravity, so you are far more likely to hear jokey toasts than solemn, tearful or gushingly sentimental ones. We convey our feelings for the family member or close friend whose ‘passage’ is being celebrated through affectionate teasing and in-jokes, smiles, fond looks, little hugs, kisses or hand-squeezes and so on, rather than by explicitly declaring how much we love, cherish or admire them. I was at an English family party to celebrate a father’s seventieth birthday, where all of these feelings had been expressed in typically minimal, understated ways, beautifully and touchingly, with much gentle humour and no speeches at all. Unfortunately, the father’s American wife found all this English lightness unbearable, and took it upon herself to stand up and deliver an earnest, syrupy speech (‘We’ve made this party for you because we all love you and we are all so proud of you and we want you to know that you’re very special to us and . . .’). The English family suffered politely through all this, their extreme discomfort betrayed only by barely visible wincing, squirming, side-long glances, discreet eye-rolls, suppressed snorts, stifled sighs and fidgety feet. When the painfully embarrassing ordeal was over, they clapped courteously – before quickly trying to restore the former light-hearted atmosphere with yet more joking. One of the family members muttered to me, ‘I know she means well, but ugh!’ Another imitated the American wife’s accent and treacly tone: ‘“We made this party because we all love you.” No! Really? Goes without saying, for Heaven’s sake!’ For the English, most emotional things ‘go without saying’. Spelling them out, even at warm, ‘uninhibited’, intimate gatherings, is highly inappropriate.

  Leaving aside these very basic, gravity-like laws, the behaviour of participants at intimate rites of passage will vary considerably, not just according to their age and class, as might be expected, but also their individual dispositions, personal quirks and histories, unique moods and motivations – the sort of stuff that is really the province of personality psychologists and psychiatrists, rather than us social scientists.

  This is all true to some extent of the more formal, less private rites of passage as well – we are individuals on these occasions too, not mere automata acting entirely in accordance with the dictates of national character. But without wishing to deny each of us our individuality, I would maintain that our behaviour at these less intimate gatherings is broadly predictable, and conforms more consistently to the principal ‘grammatical’ rules of our culture.

  Not that our rather less predictable behaviour at intimate celebrations is in any way ‘ungrammatical’. Such events are a bit like irregular verbs: they have their own rules, which allow a greater degree of warmth, spontaneity and openness than we usually permit ourselves. We are not ‘breaking the rules’ at these intimate rites. In private, among people we know and trust, the rules of Englishness specifically allow us to behave much more like normal human beings, with normal human emotions. We just don’t make earnest speeches about them.

  CLASS RULES

  But rather than end on that touching, encouraging note, I’m now going to talk about class. Again. Surely you didn’t think we’d get through a whole chapter with just a couple of passing references to the class system?

  You can probably do this bit yourself by now. C’mon, have a go: what are the main differences between a working-class funeral and a middle-class one? Or the indicators of a middle-middle versus an upper-middle wedding? Discuss with special reference to material-culture class indicators, sartorial class indicators and class-anxiety signals. Oh, all right, I’ll do it – but don’t expect anything very surprising: you can see, from what Jane Austen called ‘the tell-tale compression of the pages’, that we’re nearly done here, and if we haven’t got the hang of English class indicators and anxieties by now, we never will.

  As you might expect, there is no such thing as a classless rite of passage among the English. Every detail of a wedding, Christmas, house-warming or funeral, from the vocabulary and dress of the participants to the number and positioning of peas on their forks, is determined, at least to some extent, by their social class.

  Working-class Rites

  As a general rule, working-class rites of passage are the most lavish (in terms of expenditure relative to income). A working-class wedding, for example, will nearly always be a big ‘do’, with a sit-down meal in a restaurant, pub ‘function room’ or hotel; a big fancy car or horse-drawn Cinderella-carriage to take the bride to the wedding venue; the full complement of matching bridesmaids in tight, revealing dresses; a huge, three-tiered cake; guests in glamorous, brand-new, Sunday-best outfits and matching accessories; a specialist wedding-photographer and a professional wedding-video firm; a big, noisy evening party with dancing and free-flowing booze; a honeymoon somewhere hot. No expense spared. ‘Nothing but the best for our princess.’ I have lost count of the number
of working-class brides I’ve heard happily declaring that their own huge, elaborate, sequined-and-diamantéd wedding dresses were much better and ‘more princessy’ than the simple, understated one worn by the Duchess of Cambridge for her marriage to Prince William.

  Extravagant ‘themed’ weddings have become increasingly popular, and the costumes, props and décor more and more elaborate. Themes range from the relatively tame and vague Fairy Tale and Winter Wonderland to more specific and self-consciously ‘wacky’ themes such as Fifties Rock ‘n’ Roll, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Zombie, Vampire, etc.

  Working-class funerals (huge, elaborate wreaths; top-of-the-range coffin), Christmases (expensive gifts; copious quantities of food and drink), children’s birthdays (the latest high-tech toys, high-priced football strip and top-brand-name trainers) and other rites operate on much the same principles. Even if one is struggling financially, it is important to look as though one has spent money and ‘pushed the boat out’.

  Lower-middle and Middle-middle Rites

  Lower-middle and middle-middle rites of passage tend to be smaller and somewhat more prudent. To stick with the wedding example (although the same principles apply to other rites): lower- and middle-middle parents will be anxious to help the couple with a mortgage down-payment rather than irresponsibly ‘blowing it all on a big wedding’. There is still great concern, however, that everything should be done ‘properly’ and ‘tastefully’ (these are the classes for whom wedding-etiquette books are written), and considerable stress and anxiety over relatives who might lower the tone or bring disgrace by getting drunk and ‘making an exhibition of themselves’.