Heritage festivals overrun by LARPers. Historic homes no longer lived in, but used for guided tours and weddings. Everything considered “heritage” is roped off and unused by the people that claim it. All symptoms of a culture becoming less a real, living thing, and more something that is merely remembered, a ghost. This should be concerning to you. This is not normal.
It should not be normal for every old building in your city to be torn down or used merely as a landmark tourist attraction.
It should not be normal for a cultural festival to be carried out with an air of irony and make-believe, as if all the participants known they are just dressing up and pretending to observe something that their ancestors once did.
It should not be normal for historic homes to have plaques listing its owners over hundreds of years, only for the list of names to stop and be replaced by some heritage society that now keeps up the house in a perfect state of mummified death. That, or the current owners use it to make money off of guided tours. Why are they not just lived in?
Nowhere is this seen more than in the Anglo-sphere world, and especially in its former colonies. Nowhere is it worse than in Anglo-America.
America is forgetting that it even has an “old-stock” culture. It is forgetting that it is English. We’ve reached a point where the primary culture, English, has been forgotten, and masses of Americas are instead latching onto whatever secondary ethnic identity they have in their bloodline. Why?
Firstly, American identity after the revolution was defined as no longer being British. Of course, at the time our ancestors were all still perfectly aware that they were ethnically English. However, as time went on we started to think of ourselves as “American” in terms of ethnicity. Anglo American culture just became the default, a culture that any immigrant could participate in. This resulted in our current situation where to be “American” has actually lost all conception of being ethnically old stock Anglo.
Now, Americans define themselves as American plus whatever their European heritage is. Irish-American, German-American, etc. But no one says Anglo-American! Because it was the default, and to say Anglo-American would have at one time been redundant, it was forgotten.
Adding to this is the recent memetic idea that “white people don’t have a culture”- you’ll hear this all the time in the U.S. What this is really saying is old stock Anglos don’t have a culture. America is perfectly happy to let the Irish, Italians, Greeks, etc keep their identity. It is the default “white” people, Anglo’s, who’s culture is fading. Anglo America is forgotten, or in many cases demonized.
Perhaps some part of this was just accident as well, with the States wanting to have their own “unique” identity, so they started pushing the culture of whatever large secondary European group lived there. I don’t know.
But what is clear is that Americans no longer have any clear idea of who they are. So many people who are actually majority Anglo-American look for a different identity, like German or Celtic instead, even if it is not their primary heritage. We are left with a bewildering situation where the minority groups still have an identity, but the majority group does not.
This is why you will see plenty of German, Italian, Celtic, etc heritage festivals. These festivals are everywhere, and they are hugely popular. But they are not just celebrated by the descendants of these peoples. They are celebrated passionately by people who’s primary heritage is NOT of these cultures!
(How many in these U.S. Irish-festival crowds do you think are really of primarily Irish descent?)
As a side note, there are still genuine Americana festivals. On the East coast you’ll find celebrations and reenactments of colonial America. In the South you’ll find Civil War reenactments and antebellum plantation festivals. In the West you’ll find pioneer and Wild West fairs. This is all good, and should be continued. The American cultural issue is that since we’ve forgotten our old-stock roots as Anglos, we no longer have any real identity before 1776. Not to mention that these Americana festivals will act as if all citizens of the U.S. share old stock Americana heritage, which is of course absurd.
All of this is to say you will almost never see a true English heritage festival in America, no intentional celebration of the original and largest ethnic group in the country. The closest thing you’ll usually get beyond colonial America fairs is a renaissance fair. And they are no substitute.
Renaissance fairs are a uniquely American phenomenon, though we have now exported them to Europe. To be clear, these are not the same as true cultural heritage festivals. In Europe, festivals with a “historical” theme are usually carried out on the appropriate location, celebrated by the descendants of the people that lived in the time being reenacted. Not so in the American “renaissance fair”. The American “renaissance” festival is like a live-action recreation of a dungeons and dragons campaign. It is entirely random and fake and absurd.
Now, I’m sure these fairs are fun for the participants. I don’t want to rain on anybody’s parade, but that is not the point here. There is nothing inherently wrong with a party thrown simply for the purpose of having fun. The point here is that these sort of dress up parties reveal a gaping hole in our culture. They are just odd. I doubt this has been a common thing in healthier societies. Do you think the 13th century English had Anglo-Saxon or Brittonic dress-up heritage festivals where they pretended to be Saxon warriors or Druid wizards? I doubt it.
These American fairs commonly have a Medieval English aesthetic, so you may wonder what my issue with them is. Isn’t this exactly what I’m advocating for? Well, no.
The issue here is attitude. These fairs aren’t celebrated with the same attitude that you’ll commonly see in a German or Celtic or even Colonial heritage festival in the U.S. These “English” renaissance fairs are treated more like theater productions than a cultural celebration. They bring in acts to play the roles of historical figures, they have people dressed up as fantasy creatures, attendees will pretend that they are actually from the period being represented. This is not culture, this is LARPing.
Again, my point is not to ruin anybody’s fun. But if you’re going to attend these festivals, you must keep in mind that they are not a substitute for actual heritage or culture.
We do not need fantasy role playing renaissance fairs. Americans, if they want to restore a cultural identity, need actual English heritage festivals that are not based on LARPing, and they must be honest about the ethnicity of the original old-stock Americans. You cannot only remember the minority groups, like the Irish or Italians.
And globally, this treatment of culture and heritage as a thing of the past that we merely preserve and remember or play-pretend at must die. If it does not, the West will continue on in this zombified trance where nothing and nobody can truly exist.
Totally agree. Most people treat culture and heritage as things of the past. Like old photographs you look at when you want to feel nostalgia.
But our heritage is still our heritage, our culture is still our culture. Even in Europe in more conservative countries our culture is dying.
I’m praying for you Americans, don’t give up hope!
Disagree on getting rid of historical "play-pretend". If anything we need more of it, as it reinforces positive nostalgia for the good of the past. Perhaps patronize the festivals that make more effort to be historically accurate, some are much better than others (and a few take it quite seriously, because gate receipts have shown the more accurate it is, the better the attendence).
Better yet: Get involved yourself so you can help increase the accuracy, and use it to teach the next generations.