KILTS AND TARTANS, LADDIES!!!

[Aglifter]

Guys, in some ways, I'm going to agree w Greg.

My family is a bit clannish, and the family farms are starting to get close to family villages - a few of them could actually incorporate at this point.

We also have family silks which we still race under - those of us still racing horses.

HOWEVER, we have an actual bond - we're still, mostly, raised together - and suffer from some tribalist aspects of difficulties w dealing w other people, marriages always being stressed by those bonds, etc.

As people we do better the more we are together - and we tend to get a bit paralyzed by the idea of leaving.

You start making decisions w the goal of will it let the family remain bonded, rather than is it the most efficient.

Daughters never "truly" become someone's wife - the paternal line retains too much influence.

I love my family, but I don't know if those bonds are harmful, or the root of society, but I do know they only make sense in the context of shared beliefs and culture.

[skb12172]

Daughters never "truly" become someone's wife - the paternal line retains too much influence.

I can see that being a Very Bad Thing. Are there a lot of divorces, as a result?

[Aesop]

I'm really not sure what else to call announcing your clan affiliation by publicly wearing it's colors. Knowing just a WEE little bit of history, this really isn't that far removed from wearing gang tats or colors- actually if the person really meant it, it's worse because a gang isn't necessarily an organization linked by blood so at least a gang can avoid listing amoral familism among its flaws.

Wow, the first try was thick, this is absolutely clotted.
So tell us, in your experience, when people wear kilts and plaids, do they also routinely paint themselves with woad and pick up centuries old blood-feuds purely for old times' sake, or is alleging the slightest semblance of such nonsensical hyperbole nothing but a naked farce bereft of reason?

I've worn halloween costumes and mardi gras beads a time or two, but that doesn't equate to "embracing Roman catholicism".

I should hope not. lol You must have been in a hurry... you know these aren't Catholic, right? Now if you were to start snacking on Communion wafers....

Silly me, here all this time I was under some vague historical impression that the Pope (Gregory VI, a Catholic when last I checked) had actually moved All Hallow's Day to Novermber the first, and that the tradition of wandering souls from purgatory loose the night before was rather a lot of wholesale catholic teaching as well widespread throughout Europe from medieval times.
Then there's the whole Mardi Gras thing starting after Epiphany, and ending the day before Ash Wednesday.

Communion wafers, OTOH, are passed around in pretty much all of Christendom, Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox, to this day.

So I think when you say "Catholic" and "not Catholic" those words do not mean what you think they mean.

Call me when we start setting up federal agencies to ensure proper quotas of Celtic-ancestry/surnamed representatives, or demanded our own entrrely Gaelic-speaking state in the union, and then I'll sign on to that diagnosis.

Lame fallacy. You can't seem to tell the difference between a forest and a tree.

Just because you're a dilattante playing with symbols that you don't really grasp the full meaning of, doesn't mean the symbols don't *have* meaning. The Gaelic countries were culturally and developmentally stunted in really unfortunate ways, basing their society on tribes long after all their neighbors grew out of the habit... and this was not good for the Gaels. Still isn't.

Embracing the symbolism of a more backward way of life as a way of 'honoring your heritage'.... Yeah.

Yeah, right, except for the whole Gaelic monastic history of preserving and spreading education to the untutored lowland Picts and other savages for centuries ahead of the savages' ability to process basic concepts kind of undoes that screed.
The culturally and developmentally "stunted" Gaelic cultures were also largely unified and at peace internally centuries ahead of when the English were still killing each other off in droves and burning each other at the stake for heresy. Maybe "Bloody Mary" outside the context of a cocktail recipe would be instructive.

So the "backward" way of life being celebrated is hardly applicable to the same peoples who single-handedly brought education and culture to the people best represented by the peasants gathering muck in the field during Monty Python's Quest For The Holy Grail. Culture in the British Isles spread from Ireland and Scotland to Britain, not the other way around. You could look it up. The best thing about Britain from the perspective of ancient Rome was that unlike the wild Celts, the Picts and Britons and such were trainable lapdogs entirely amenable to a collar of lesser-class servility which Rome found convenient.

So please, before presuming to tutor on what anyone understands about symbolism or "backward tribalism" and its celebration, find a historically solid place to stand first.

I can understand if men in skirts frighten you, but let's don't be dragging everything and the kitchen sink into what boils down to disliking a particular flavor of ice cream, and falsely denigrating it as some imagined celebratory frolic of pre-Luddite medievalism. It neither breaks your leg nor picks your pocket. Let it be.

[Netpackrat]

Hee hee. Maybe I should start my own sept. I wonder what our colors should be.....

I dunno, but you'll want a stout hat as protection from that rain cloud that always seems to hover over your head.

[Aglifter]

A) Someone has lightened up, post-baby

B).

[Mike OTDP]

Jesus, have we really turned this into an argument? OK, let's argue this. If I have Plaids or Tartans on both sides, does Maternal or Paternal win out? If it depends, what are the circumstances for each?

According to the gurus over at X Marks the Scot (kilt forum), it's your choice. You've a perfectly legitimate claim to both. And to applicable regional tartans, professional/organizational tartans, and the general tartans.

You should buy two kilts.

[First Shirt]

Fortunately, I should never find myself in a place/situation where I would be required to wear a kilt, which is good, because I really don't have the legs for it.

And I'd keep thinking I'd forgotten something.

[skb12172]

Heh, I'm actually not wearing a kilt. I'm buying a tie/waistcoat combo in the family pattern. I might also throw in a scarf for the 'ol overcoat, but I'm just not the kilt wearing type.

[Greg]

So tell us, in your experience, when people wear kilts and plaids, do they also routinely paint themselves with woad and pick up centuries old blood-feuds purely for old times' sake, or is alleging the slightest semblance of such nonsensical hyperbole nothing but a naked farce bereft of reason?

Wear orange in Boston.

The culturally and developmentally "stunted" Gaelic cultures were also largely unified and at peace internally.

OK, I thought you might have been joking with me until I read that part and then I was sure.

Whatever their charms and virtues, nothing Gaelic has *ever* been unified and at peace internally. And inasmuch as any Gaelic characteristics remain, nothing Gaelic is completely unified or at peace internally even today.

Medieval Ireland was the Somalia of its time and place, with constant endemic tribal warfare. They didn't keep it to thselves either. It's only a slight exaggeration to say it took the Norse to bring with them the idea of cities and towns to Ireland. As late as the beginning of the 17th Century, Ulster had precious few permanent settlements and much of the population still lived as NOMADS.

And yeah, you really want to ease up on the Irish booster revisionist history.

About the best you can say, and it probably is the strongest argument... is that putting on plaids and tartans now is harmless exactly to the extent that people don't really know what it signifies. That time has made it safe by draining it of it's meaning, and the people doing it have already otherwise demonstrated that they're not about to turn into feuding tribesmen. And that's almost certainly completely true for anyone here.

But completely aside from all the real tribal hellholes we're still dealing with across Asia and Africa, there are places at home where the traditions and mindset of tribalism are still very real and very much a problem. Maybe I'm just too sensitive to the issue because I have actually lived in Boston and (to a lesser extent) New York.

[Greg]

Hee hee. Maybe I should start my own sept. I wonder what our colors should be.....

I dunno, but you'll want a stout hat as protection from that rain cloud that always seems to hover over your head.

You really haven't the slightest idea. Ask Weetabix.

I do however have a commitment to the truth, the exchange of ideas, and the puncturing of bullshit. I do try to help sharpen your thinking as much as you sharpen mine.