One kind of American

Sometimes people say I am not very American. Sometimes I feel like mainstream American values are so against my own values that I want to leave this country. But the reality is that I am an American. There are many different types of Americans. The way I see it, I belong to one particular subculture within the United States, and my purpose here is to describe that subculture to you.

There are some things I like about my country. I like some of my country's values (though I believe we often fall short of living up to these values): freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and equal opportunity for all. I don't like the materialism or the attempts to dominate other countries. I appreciate that we have more freedom, prosperity, peace, security, and opportunities than people in some other countries, but I believe that there are good things about other countries too.

I don't like to display the American flag because to me it implies that I think my country is better than others. I prefer the bumper sticker I used to have, which had an image of the earth with the words, "We're all in this together."

I don't like to call myself an American because the United States is not all there is to America. There are also other countries in North America, Central America, and South America. It would be better to call myself a United Statesian, but that's not a word and it's rather long and cumbersome, so I am stuck with using "American."

Now here are some details about the American subculture which I belong to:

Food and drink

We like natural, organic, wholesome food. We like to get our food from (in order of preference) our gardens, farmer's markets, natural foods stores/food co-ops, and the natural foods section of supermarkets. Many of us are vegetarian or vegan. Some like foods from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Some of us may try not to eat too many sweet foods, but some of us enjoy desserts. Popular desserts include Ben & Jerry's ice cream, vegan versions of ice cream such as sorbet and Soy Delicious, and homemade cookies. We may try to avoid very processed sweets such as Twinkies. Real sugar is better than an artificial sweetener.

Typical beverages include water, juice (just pure juice, not with sweetenings added), and herbal tea. Some of us don't drink coffee. Those who do may prefer fair trade organic coffee. We don't drink much alcohol or soda.

My favorite cookbook is The World in Your Kitchen by Troth Wells. I've heard that a lot of people like Moosewood cookbooks, but I've never tried one.

As an example of a recipe, I'll share the recipe for apple crisp which I learned from my mother. When I was growing up, we had two apple trees in our yard, so this was traditionally made with apples from our own trees.

Apple Crisp

Slice 6 large apples. Arrange sliced apples in greased 11x7x2 baking pan. Pour 1 cup of orange juice over apples. Sprinkle with cinnamon and raisins if desired.

Cut together 3/4 cup flour and 8 tablespoones butter or margarine (1 stick) until crumbly. Spread this mixture over apples.

Bake at 350 for 45-60 minutes, or until apples are tender and crust is crisp and lightly browned.

Serve warm or cold. May be served with milk, yogurt, or cheese.

Personal Appearance

Some of us have tattoos and piercings, go on diets to lose weight, or wear make-up and jewelry, but for the most part, we don't like to spend much time on our personal appearance. We live a healthy lifestyle and take care of ourselves, but we don't try to change too much about the body that we were given. We'd rather spend our time on having fun and doing worthwhile things. For the most part, we eat a healthy diet, exercise, don't smoke, and don't use a lot of alcohol or caffeine. For most of us, living this way is not deprivation, it's just the natural and comfortable way to live.

Recreation

Hiking


Climbing trees

We're not much into hanging out at malls or bars, or gambling. What else is there to do? Lots of fun stuff! We do sometimes enjoy TV, movies, and video games. TV shows we tend to like are Buffy and Star Trek. However, we think forms of entertainment which don't involve staring at a screen are preferable. One of the best social activities is to simply have friends over for dinner. Some of us like activities that involve creating things, such as gardening, furniture-making, quilting, or photography. Some enjoy outdoor pursuits such as picnicking, walking, hiking, sitting by the river watching the boats go by, bicycling, in-line skating, ice skating, sledding, snowshoeing, cross country skiing, sitting under a tree, climbing a tree, camping, going to fairs and festivals, frisbee, rambling around rocky ocean shores, kayaking, canoeing, sailing, or just generally frolicking about. We don't like ATVs, snowmobiles, and motorcycles. We often like public radio, public TV, and musical genres such as folk, blues, jazz, new age, world, oldies, or alternative rock. We don't like Clear Channel. Some like to learn about other cultures and to travel. When traveling, we prefer to camp or to stay in hostels, homes, or small inns rather than large hotels. Some enjoy games such as Magic the Gathering, Scrabble, Boggle, or cards. We don't spend all our time doing active and/or social things. We need time to ourselves for solitude and reflection. Sometimes this time is spent working on a project at home, going for a walk, writing in our journals, or sitting still looking at nature. Sometimes we make web sites about things we are interested in or do genealogy research. Many of us enjoy hanging out at bookstores, reading and writing. We read fun things like novels and comics, and also educational things about the issues which interest us.

Consumption

We don't like to waste the world's resources. It's better to re-use things than to buy new ones. It's good to keep using something as long as you can, rather than throw it away at the first sign of wear. When we have no more use for something, it's better to give it away or recycle it than to just throw it away. We don't like it when things are sold with a lot of excessive packaging. When grocery shopping, some of us bring our own canvas bags. Some of us have hybrid cars or houses which use solar energy. Others just hang their laundry outside to dry and walk or ride a bicycle when they have somewhere to go. We may just do these things on our own, or we may identify with the voluntary simplicity movement.

We don't like big chains. We don't like malls, WalMart or McDonald's. We like small independently owned business. Or better yet, we like to avoid buying: make things ourselves rather than buy them, and have friends over to dinner rather than go out to a restaurant. When shopping, we seek products labeled with words like "organic," "recycled," "no animal testing," and "natural." Sometimes we check the information available from Coop America when deciding what to buy. Those of us who are more upscale may like to buy crafts made by people from other cultures from organizations such as UNICEF or Ten Thousand Villages. Those who are not so upscale may shop at thrift stores or use things we find in dumpsters.

Transportation

We don't like cars. They pollute the air and use a lot of gas. We prefer walking, riding a bicycle, or taking public transportation. However, most of us do use cars because except in some large cities, it's inconvenient to get around without them. We don't like SUV's. We like Hondas, Toyotas, Volkswagens, and Subarus. We like hybrid cars.

Religion

You will find us if you hang out with Quakers, Unitarian Universalists, or Wiccans, but many of us do not participate in any organized religion. We may be atheist or agnostic, or religious in our own personal way. Some like Buddhism or Taoism. We can also be found among the Christian and Jewish religions which are more common in the U.S.

Morality

We believe that morality is measured by integrity, compassion, and respect, not by belonging to a particular religion or by conforming to the traditional family form of heterosexual marriage. We hold certain political and religious beliefs, and we have certain lifestyle preferences, but that does not mean we think we are morally superior to people who do do not share these beliefs and preferences. What's important is to treat people, other living things, and the earth with care. That's what we strive to do, and the standard we use when judging the actions of others.

Putting our values into action

Some of us are activists on issues such as peace, the environment, poverty, fair trade, animal rights, and gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender rights. Some focus their activities more on their local community, volunteering to help with food pantries, parks, folk music performances, arts festivals, animal shelters, or tutoring local children. Others are not so involved in the community but put their values into action in the way they live their lives, devoting their time to nurturing home, family, and garden.

Here are some reading materials and song lyrics which suggest some ways of putting values into action:

• Mother Earth News
• Utne Magazine
• The Only Way by Mark Erelli
• What We Left Behind by Tom Pacheco

Holidays

Because we have a variety of religious backgrounds, we also have a variety of holiday observances. Many of us celebrate the holidays of our Jewish, Christian, or pagan traditions. Many of us are turned off by the materialism and overeating often associated with holiday observances, and try to keep our holiday rituals simple and meaningful. Some of us don't celebrate holidays much at all, for a variety of reasons such as believing that we should remember the things that are important to us every day rather than just one day a year.

Holidays I observe are Thanksgiving, Christmas/solstice, and birthdays of family and friends. Here are my holiday rituals:

Thanksgiving: Thanksgiving is a time to think about the things we are grateful for. It is not a time for eating meat, watching football, or overeating, but it is a time to share good food with family and friends. This past Thanksgiving, I did something which I hope will become my new Thanksgiving tradition: I invited some friends over for a vegetarian pre-Thanksgiving dinner. I held it a few days before Thanksgiving so that we could all spend Thanksgiving Day with our families.

Christmas/solstice : Chistmas is a big deal in the U.S. Christianity is the majority religion in our country, but it's also a country that believes in supporting religious diversity. Often around Christmas time, people will want to throw a big party at school or at work. They know that if they call it a Christmas party, some people will be excluded, so instead they call it a "holiday" party and say that it is to celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and the solstice. In the same way, as part of the Christmas tradition, Christians want to send Christmas cards. But they don't want to offend anyone so they get a card that says "happy holidays." I am very much in favor of doing things that make everyone feel included, and I can see how it would be inappropriate to send a card saying "Merry Christmas" to someone who doesn't celebrate Christmas. However, I don't like it sometimes when I feel people are having a Christmas celebration but taking all the Christmas out of it. I like an observance which affirms multiple traditions rather than waters down all traditions. Living in a diverse society should be like a rich, chunky soup, where we embrace many different things, not like a watery soup, where we take away all the things that make us different.

My own personal holiday observance is a celebration of both Christmas and the solstice. I am a universalist, which means that I believe that inspiration can be drawn from many different religions. I appreciate Jesus as someone who spoke about universal love, but I don't see Jesus as central to my religion, so therefore I don't place a lot of emphasis on the story of the birth of Jesus. The Christian aspect of my holiday observance is a spirit of reaching out in love to humankind. From the solstice, I take the spirit of light shining in the darkness. The binding of these two threads forms the spiritual core which underlies my holiday observances. The rituals I follow to celebrate these holidays are the Christmas rituals I grew up with, but many of them have origins in solstice traditions. Following these rituals is the way I bring this spiritual core to life.

I see my Christmas/solstice rituals as being about reaching out and touching the people who surround me in concentric circles, from my immediate family in the inner circle to the people I've never met in the outer circle. I spend Christmas Day with my family. My mother, my brother Stephen, and I like to get up the earliest, and we are also the ones who like to go for walks, so usually we go out for a walk while others are sleeping. Then in the late morning we open our stockings and presents. Gift giving doesn't have to be about getting flashy and expensive things. On Christmas Day, gift giving is an activity that gives us a way of doing something together. It's a magical time, a time of being together, sharing, giving, surprises, and laughter. One thing that we traditionally put in each other's stockings is a list of scrambled words. Throughout the day, in between other activities, we work on solving them. It's a way of hanging out with each other. When scrambling words for someone, we carefully pick out words that relate to things the person likes. During the afternoon on Christmas, we eat a meal together, usually bread, salad, and pasta, prepared by my stepfather and/or my brother Jesse. We finish off the day with a relaxing evening together singing Christmas carols or playing a game such as Scrabble or Boggle.

While I spend Christmas Day with some of my parents and siblings, I try to see as many of the rest of my relatives as I can around the same time. Many congregate in the area where I grew up, since my grandparents on both sides still live in that area, so I stay for about a week to see all the visiting relatives. My father is one of the visiting relatives I see there, but he does not live in that area, and I usually also make a trip to spend a few days visiting him.

Another way I reach out at this time of year to the circles of people surrounding me is by sending holiday cards to many friends and relatives. Sometimes these cards are a way of keeping in touch with people I don't usually see. In such cases, I'll write individual letters with each card, telling about what I've been doing over the past year. For the past few years, I've gotten together with a friend and we've written our cards together, which is yet another way that my holiday traditions are about bringing people together. When I write Christmas cards, I like to light candles and listen to Christmas music.

In addition to reaching out to everyone I know through cards, visits, and gifts, I think it's also important at this time of year to remember the people I don't know. That's why I also try to do something like making a contribution to charity.

Those are my traditions of reaching out to the people surrounding me in concentric circles: spending time with people, sending cards, and helping others through charity. The other theme of my holiday observances is bringing light into darkness. My "light" includes sounds and sights. I like to decorate my home with a tree, lights, and tinsel, sing Christmas carols, and go to holiday concerts. One concert that I like is the 8th Step solstice show, which includes songs of Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and the solstice. These traditions of music, lights, decoration, and festivities make the solstice, the darkest time of the year, a time of beauty and joy.

Birthdays: I don't always observe birthdays. When I do, the observance is usually fairly small. I may call or send an e-mail to say happy birthday. The idea that I try to keep behind my birthday observances is that a birthday is a time to celebrate the birth of that person, to be glad that the person came into the world. Depending on my relationship with the person whose birthday it is, I may include sentiments along this line in my birthday greetings.

Other rituals

We sometimes at least partially follow American traditions for things like weddings and funerals, but often we do things a little differently from other Americans. I usually feel a little confused when I get invited to a mainstream wedding or funeral, because I don't know exactly how they are supposed to go.

When my great grandfather passed away, we had a Quaker memoral service. People sat in silence and then whenever moved to do so, someone got up and spoke about him. There was no one presiding over the service, giving a prepared speech or directing who should talk next. I don't think I have ever been to a wake.

In my family, weddings often don't include church ceremonies, catered receptions, gift registries or bridal showers. I remember as a kid going to my aunt and uncle's wedding, where they said their vows to each other in a park next to a carousel, which we then all rode. My cousin and his wife also said their vows in a park. He was dressed in shorts. After the ceremony there was a potluck picnic and I went rollerblading.

Examples

Here are some examples of people who belong to this culture:

If you want more examples, go hang out at natural foods stores, vegetarian restaurants, folk music performances, Unitarian Universalist churches, Quaker meetings, peace vigils, and hiking organizations. You'll find us there.

By Terry Hayden, March 20, 2005.