Comic Strips

You are absolutely exoticising European traditions as having ancient histories compared to American ones. You're just not doing it consciously, or on purpose. Ironically, you seem to be doing it because... well, that's an American cultural tradition inherited from colonialism.

Okay, let me get specific, because otherwise we're not gonna get anywhere. Since we started with Christmas. Hey, did you ever hear about that Dutch controversy about that traditional black slave-like figure portrayed by some dude in blackface that is now deemed racist and sometimes defended by Dutch racists as being traditional and innocent? Yeah, that's 19th century stuff. The taboo of blackface is purely an American thing that is getting exported now, which is part of the controversy.

The Dutch also generate the idea of St Nicholas as "Sinterklaas", which is recognizable worldwide in its American form. The Dutch guy comes from Spain in early December to leave gifts instead. In Spain, curiously, they didn't use to have a Santa equivalent, but they did do the "arriving in a parade" bit about the Three Wise Men in January. That tradition? 19th century as well, even if the story itself is in the bible. And then that got semi-replaced by good old Santa. But not the one coming from the Netherlands, just US Santa, largely imported to Spain via Coca-Cola ads and American movies in the late 20th century.

Meanwhile, in Germany and Italy they didn't have any medieval Christmas traditions at all because "Germany" and "Italy" didn't actually exist as a country until the 19th century. Most of what you think about "traditions" from those places are local stuff that then got repackaged and branded at the national level after that point.

The reason you don't think about it that way is probably that the US is a colony and I supposed US racists liked bragging about their ancient European heritage and American exceptionalists liked bragging about how new and modern American ideals are. But obviously a lot of the perception of that heritage, from the US version of national stereotypes to the uniquely American versions of imported celebrations is itself purely American culture.

And then the rest of the world learns about it through cultural imperialism. I'm not American, and I know about Thanksgiving, and Paul Revere, and western mythos and St Paddy's day (but the American one, not the Irish one) and Cinco de Mayo and Juneteenth and Black Friday is a thing here now even if we don't have a Thanksgiving day to go with it. There are local rappers here and the country went through a rockabilly phase in music at one point. Obviously most of the cinema in theatres is American and has been for the better part of a century.

Culture isn't culture because it's old. Culture is of the moment, it refers to the assumptions and habits and traditions the people who are alive today have. It takes one generation to create a cultural tradition, or to lose it. The US has had an iron grip on a significant portion of all the media and messaging that gets distributed worldwide for far longer than that. The mythos of ancient culture and its amputation from colonial territories is, itself, American cultural heritage, developed during the beginnings of nationalism along with nation-states and weaponized in revolutionary times across the world.

Man, we've gotten so far away from topic, but I do find this very interesting so I'm not mad about it.