chirasul posted:
my only advice is to BE CAREFUL posting about holiday traditions around europeans. you'll post something casual like "anyone else watch the old Grinch movie every year? what a classic" and a european will appear as if summoned and say some shit like "funny how USAmericans always CONVENIENTLY forget that Not Everyone On Earth is from The USA…….. no of COURSE we dont watch 'the grunch' or whatever the fuck that is…. our tradition is to attend a community showing of Glummdorf the Racial Stereotype"

themainspoon replies with screenshots of several tumblr tags and comments:

riseupriseupandcomealong:
my mom’s (american) class tried doing a language exchange thing w a sister school in spain and they decided to send each other boxes of gifts for christmas. the spanish class made remarks about oh christmas in the usa is so commercialized we have ~real traditions~ here and then my mom opened a box full of blackface dolls and blackface doll ornaments and blackface clothespins in front of her students

raygender:
Did once have a Dutch woman vehemently defend the Festive Christmas Blackface by repeating "it's different in Europe” with increasing desperation until she was crying. Literally all anybody else present did was just like, calmly say they were uncomfortable with the practice and not change her mind when she wailed about it.

monkey-mulch:
you bring up rudolph the red nosed reindeer and they bring out Skimbo the filthy redskin and im barely even joking about that they actually had this thing called indian plays in both soviet countries and germany

themainspoon:
European children waiting patiently on Hatemas Eve for Racism Claus to slur down the chimney and segregate all of their presents by colour.

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[–] LordWiggle@lemmy.world 50 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Dutch guy here. Our racist saint Nicolas "Sinterklaas" with blackface "zwarte Piet" isn't Christmas celebration. He arrives in November and celebrates his birthday on the 5th of December by giving gifts to children.

All aspects from American Christmas celebration were stolen from European traditions. The story from Scandinavia, the character from Germany, the name from the Netherlands. But the Dutch tradition isn't Christmas. It's racist though, not arguing that. I'm fighting it though, because fuck racism. Also the racist part is only recent, back in the old days "zwarte Piet" was a white guy with black soot all over him from climbing through the chimney. Later it became a caricature black person which is so fucked up.

Sadly there's a lot of systematic racism deeply nestled in European cultures and traditions. Slowly we are working to getting rid of them, although there are also many fighting to keep them. But luckily we're making progress.

But if we're pointing fingers here, at least we're not celebrating genocide every year by slaughtering insane amounts of turkeys with Thanksgiving 👀

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 37 points 6 days ago (1 children)

They weren't stolen, they're descended from. Because white Americans aren't native to the Americas and brought their traditions with them.

It was kind of a big thing, history wise?

[–] LordWiggle@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Because the states were new and full of mixed cultures, they desperately created national holidays to create a more general national feeling among the wide variety of people. Many were hand picked, to create a national culture as the states had none. It's all to create unity and identity.

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[–] Nalivai@lemmy.world 9 points 5 days ago

Americans are incapable of not looking at everything through the lens of their own cultural bias. It's not unique for them, but boy do they excel at it

[–] LongMember69@lemmy.world 20 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

OP: posts a meme about weird and racist European holiday traditions and how Europeans will appear to defend them

Europeans ITT:

well actually it’s not a Christmas tradition it’s from November

yeah uh, and it’s not actually blackface because we decided it’s soot and ash even though it was and still is blackface

ok we might have people here that like the blackface but they live all the way on the other side of the country which is like a whole 10 minutes away so it doesn’t count

uhhhh you Americans wouldn’t understand with your newer, watered-down, holiday traditions that are stolen from elsewhere

it’s not racist it’s cultural and you Americans would understand if you could introspect about your culture

[–] tb_@lemmy.world 8 points 5 days ago

We have been transitioning to "soot" smears rather than full-on blackface and red lipstick, which has been very welcome. Yet some people hate it vehemently, "it's a festival for the children, they don't understand the racist implications so we don't need to change it!" (the latter part isn't generally spoken out loud).

[–] nicknonya@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 6 days ago

fucking Thank You.

whenever i post something like this i always hope people here would be at least marginally more willing to engage with them than the average person seeing how left-leaning they tend to be and i'm always proven wrong

logically i know they're a minority, most people don't even comment, but still.
never expected to see someone say "i don't care if it's racist it's my culture so It Stays" here. like do you not hear yourself??

[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 21 points 6 days ago (4 children)

Germany literally has a children's game called "Who's Afraid of the Black Man"

I don't wanna hear about Racism being a "uniquely American problem"

Cause it very clearly is not.

School shootings and medical debt however ARE "uniquely American problems"

[–] Duke_Nukem_1990@feddit.org 42 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

That's based on the black death, aka. the plague, hence the rules of the game.

We have enough rascist shit in our culture but this one isn't :)

[–] cows_are_underrated@feddit.org 13 points 6 days ago

I actually didnt knew that.Thanks. :)

[–] djsoren19@yiffit.net 11 points 6 days ago

It's seen as an American problem because America is one of the most multicultural countries in the world. It's not surprising you don't hear about racism much in countries with 80%+ white populations

[–] hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 5 days ago

I learned pretty recently that the "black man" is actually supposed to either be the plague/death or some kind of boogeyman.

Here in Finland, it used to be "kuka pelkää mustaa miestä" which means the same thing, but was later switched to "kuka pelkää mustekalaa" (mustekala=octopus/squid) because, well, that name didn't work too well when kids started to actually see black men.

That being said, racism seems to be one of the most popular pastimes in Europe.

[–] Don_alForno@feddit.org 13 points 6 days ago

Looking back as an adult the origin is clearly racist. But since I sung that in kindergarden myself: We didn't associate "black man" with a person of colour. When I was 4, I was imagining some creep in a black trenchcoat.

[–] antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 6 days ago

they actually had this thing called indian plays in both soviet countries and germany

Americans are so racist they have to fabricate nonexistent racist stuff elsewhere to feel better about their own racism. Impressive.

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 6 points 5 days ago

Meanwhile, Brazil just embraced the capitalism hell-mas. We do like making nativity scenes (presépio)

[–] fushuan@lemm.ee 3 points 5 days ago

My Christmas tradition is some fat drunk Sheppard that comes down the mountain with presents and coal to announce that Christ has been born.

Y'all are weird.

[–] Cassa@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

This was apparently my reminder that the nordic christmas is not european ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

never seen a blackface, is pretty commercialized and all - but not seen any hateful stuff that I recognize.

[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 4 days ago

it's commercialized but like, softly so, like the nordics in general.

[–] LANIK2000@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

I hate christmas and I can't wait for it to be over. I actually quite like winter, but christmas always comes to ruin it. The whole thing is a sham, no matter what country does it. Stupid half made up traditions aside, I hate people feeling obligated to get me shit and cutting deeper into our already suffering wallets just to keep our fragile system from immediately imploding.

[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

we found the one guy who's actually part of the war on christmas

[–] LANIK2000@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

Ya sure did, and back into my hole I go! You'll never get me alive!

[–] FinishingDutch@lemmy.world 7 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Since Americans basically stole every tradition they have from someone else, I’m not gonna worry about their opinion on them :D

The US is a toddler when it comes to history and traditions. I drive by a church that was built in the year 900. That one’s actually called the ‘new church’ since it replaced one from the year 400. That’s history. And we’ve got traditions that go back centuries further.

Just because Americans prefer watered down, tame versions of our European traditions, doesn’t mean the rest of us are going to follow. Krampus, Sunneklaas, Sinterklaas and other traditions are here to stay.

[–] drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zone 27 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Bigotry is as old as time.

Bragging about how vintage your racism is isn't impressive.

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[–] nicknonya@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 6 days ago (1 children)

"our racism is fine because it's Tradition™"

[–] Honytawk@lemmy.zip 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

No, even our traditions change.

Take Sinterklaas, the "blackface" wasn't something negative. Those black Pete were respected by everyone. It wasn't like the 1950 US television where blackface was used to represent dumb stereotypes of black people.

But even then, we Europeans see how it can be seen as something negative by certain groups, so to accommodate them they are being changed to soot Petes since they travel through chimneys.

[–] JackRiddle@sh.itjust.works 21 points 6 days ago

I disagree strongly on the first point. Blackface was not percieved as negative by a lot of people because they had no awareness of it's significance, but black pete has always been a racist stereotype. It's not "oh, this is a character who happens to be black", it's "this thick-lipped gold-earring wearing pitch-black person with old-timey clothes is the servant of an old bisshop".

This shit has always been fucked up. And we didn't just make an easy decision to change them because some people were uncomfortable, people fought for that. And half of the people are still "bUt iTs jUsT a ChIlDrEnS hOlIdAy iS evErYthInG rAciSt tHEse DaYs?"

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