Sometimes, it is just surreal to be here in the States. You chug along, noticing the little, constant differences from home, and talking about culture and accents and influences and beer, and then suddenly some particular day is important and everyone comes over all American. !
Today is ... something. The first Cubs game of the baseball season – or is it the Sox? It wasn't made entirely clear to me, and I didn't really bother to find out. Last week, everyone was all excited about the baseball season opening, and the general sense I got of that was it marks the beginning of Spring, real Spring. (Of course, we may very well have several snow falls between now and the end of May; that doesn't preclude the Springness of Spring having Sprung, apparently.)
So down in the SDR (student dining room, where I work and thus get free food that's already prepared in meal-type format), it is baseball fever. They're serving hotdogs, calling out and throwing crackerjack packets (caramel popcorn and peanuts) into the crowd, a popcorn machine going, baseball caps on stuff, signs, Chicago- and baseball-themed music playing, interspersed with old baseball radio commentary ... I got told off for putting ketchup on my "proper beef" Polish hotdog.
And they are enjoying themselves so much. It's cute, actually; especially the two cooks in their forties who appear to be reliving their boyhoods in front of us – they're the ones pitching crackerjacks at students' heads. Americans know how to celebrate. Even if I don't necessarily agree with their reasons, methods, style, or extravagance, I will laud their ability to unabashedly celebrate what they love. This is not an ironic culture, and this is one of the ways it serves them well.
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Your last few sentences articulated my reaction well. A few people asked me things like "are you gonna make it?" I had to tell them that I was glad to see everyone enjoying all this madness, but I was not enjoying it myself.
ReplyDeleteIt's an experience, anyway. As an outsider, it's anthropologically fascinating.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the cultural commentary, Temperance.
ReplyDeleteCan I ask, do you think it's a bit of a Christian-y thing, or do all Americans go this nuts?
I ask because I can imagine a similar (perhaps not quite so over-the-top) situation occurring in a Christian cultural enclave here, and I would put it down to them not following the normal Aussie cultural celebration of all things with beer and glassings. Christians seem to just get this pent-up need to celebrate, and they're not allowed to go boozing and whoring, so they play sports - in this case baseball.
That's my hypothesis. Since I hate sport, it's not something I've been in the midst of, but I have witnessed it here.
Mm, no, I think it's American; here it was just a Christian manifestation. Ie, without the beer. You just have to wander around the city on particular days to see that this is a cultural tendency to celebrate their identity markers, such as baseball. Superbowl also comes to mind, and then there's the way they approach their holidays and things like St Pat's day; the city dyes the river green, everyone wears green ... and gets smashed. I think that's the extent of it, but yeah, there's a definite American approach to this stuff, of which this was probably a fair representation. As in, the over-the-topness (to our eyes, anyway) is a key American element of it. (Of course, any Americans who wish to comment might set us straight on the matter....)
ReplyDeleteI agree with you on some levels. I defnintely think the western church has lost its grip on celebration, not just because we can't do it the way the culture around us does, but also because it has almost come to be seen as unseemly. As though God frowns upon celebration – when he specifically ordains celebration for his people. It's just his celebration has a purpose, which would be the other thing we've lost. When you honestly don't suffer much, celebration becomes trivial. I think that's part of it, too – that we feel the triviality of our celebration relative to the suffering/comfort quotient of our lives, and we become unspokenly ashamed of it.
Hm, a study of celebration in the church throughout the ages. Could be interesting.
Nina, you must pursue a PhD in some sort of sociocultural anthropology with a university that will pay you for it.
ReplyDeleteBut then I have to choose! I can't do that! :)
ReplyDelete