On the face of it this looks like a nonsensical question. If we have to search for it, how can it be "our" culture?
Consider the urban American Indian whose experience of tribal culture consists of casinos and "pow-wows." He certainly is aware that there is more to his heritage, but also knows that if he wants to embrace it he would have to actively pursue knowledge of traditional rites, beliefs, and perhaps language. There was a time when this was not the case; but his culture has been disrupted (by European colonization, modernity, Christianity) for centuries, and therefore must be actively sought out by those who were not fortunate enough to have been raised in one of the few enclaves where the traditions are maintained.
Very few would argue that our Amerindian's efforts to embrace his heritage are somehow inauthentic or misguided. Almost no-one would claim that the tribal culture he seeks to integrate into his own life does not, on a very deep level, belong to him.
Americans of European descent find themselves in an analogous situation. Our culture is in such a state of decay that many of us are misinformed about its nature. If we want to embrace it we will have to actively pursue knowledge of traditional rites, beliefs, and language. There was a time when this was not the case; but our culture has been disrupted (by modernity and Christianity) for over a millennium, and therefore must be actively sought out, for enclaves where the traditions are maintained are nonexistent.
It is made all the harder because there are many who proclaim that our efforts to embrace our heritage are inauthentic or misguided. Many cry that the culture we seek to integrate into our own lives does not, on any level, belong to us.
So where is this "traditional culture" of ours lurking?
It's actually not "lurking" at all--it's hiding in plain sight, unnoticed by most Americans because of its familiarity.
First, our tradition lives in our mother tongue. English has a whole host of words which had sacred connotations in elder times; those meanings have simply become obscured by centuries of Christian influence.
Our most beloved holidays, with their candles and colors and pageantry, are of Teutonic Pagan origin, as any Puritan Protestant will tell you at length. Yule, Easter, and Halloween were holy days long before our ancestors so much as heard of Christianity.
The oldest roots of our legal system are to be found in English Common Law, which in turn grows from the soil of ancient Teutonic legal concepts. Despite assertions that our laws are somehow based on Christianity, Thomas Jefferson declared in 1824:
"The proof of the contrary, which you have adduced, is incontrovertible; to wit, that the common law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the name of Christ pronounced, or knew that such a character had ever existed."
American folklore is also replete with tales which display Pagan European motifs, as is to be expected. Like so much else in our culture, we didn't just invent it out of thin air once we arrived in on this continent; it is an organic continuation of that which we already knew. It provides another medium through which we can pick out the thread of our cultural traditions. There are excellent compendiums of folklore which provide much insight into the connections between the worldview of our rural citizens and that of our European forebears.
The same can be said for traditional American folk music; here I do not refer to "Country music" or its popular relatives, which are no more than a starched, commercialized and sanitized parody of our traditional music. Nor do I mean the so-called "folk" musicians such as Dylan, Baez, or Seeger, who merely make use of a folk-idiom to propagate nontraditional themes. The real deal is harder to find, but is there for those who would seek it out.
Our very attitudes toward the world are those of the unchurched; for our forebears only nominally ever "converted" to Christianity. This is not to say that there were (and are) no sincere converts; but to this very day we as a culture tend to consider those who really embrace Christian doctrine and practices as being somehow strange or out of step with the rest of us. Plenty of Americans pay lip service to Christianity while being ignorant of most of its myths and lax (at best!) in observing its precepts. Most are unaware that there is anything else out there, or that our forebears actually had a religion before Christianity came: a religion specific to our folk, our tongue, and our worldview.
That the imagery used by our ancestors still exerts a powerful influence on us is shown by the content of our fantasy literature, which is dominated by a vision of an Earth populated with Gods and Goddesses, elves, dragons, dwarfs, wizards, etc.--all of which were important players in the worldview of our Teutonic Pagan forebears. The success of those works in popular culture is in direct proportion to their faithfulness to that world--witness The Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia, and to a lesser extent the Harry Potter books, which rely heavily on English folklore.
Much work has been done in reforging the links to our most eldritch cultural traditions; much remains to be done. The dust of centuries of ignorance and misunderstanding must be cleared away so that one day, our descendants will be able to embody true cultural authenticity, with full knowledge of their ancient roots and their place in the modern world.
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