Anyone's spouse/significant other vehemently opposed to you kilting?

[seanachie]

My wife is Chinese, born in El Paso but her mother was born in China and her paternal grandparents immigrated from China to grow produce along the Rio Grand. As a point of pride, not arrogance, she points out so many things that existed in China well before they were introduced in China. She read the article that a member either wrote or linked here some time ago that discussed tartan being discovered in western China that was 3,000 years old. So it has become a joke about tartan being more Sino than Celtic. Hence, no issues with the kilt and I have worn one all over China on vacation fall 2010.

[Sharkman]

My girlfriend is not too crazy about it, but she has a been a good sport about it anyway.

I was going to have some fun on Tartan Day and I asked if she would like to go and at first she said there was no way she was going out with me wearing a kilt. I was going with or without her anyway and she relented and came along and we managed to have some fun on top of it all.

Even though, she is still not a big fan.

[privypiper2002]

Kinda like the old joke but with a twist.

"My wife told me that If I want to go out with my kilt on I could do it without her....I'll miss her while I'm out."

A little levity to an otherwise stressful family issue.

[Dale Seago]

Whie I don't think it was strictly necessary, I made a point of getting my SO a nice tartan ruana in one of my (Douglas) family setts so she could wear it if she chose when out with me.

[CDNSushi]

So it has become a joke about tartan being more Sino than Celtic. Hence, no issues with the kilt and I have worn one all over China on vacation fall 2010.

Maybe that's why we've lasted in Japan for nearly a decade... Eastern cultures, despite being very closed-minded about SOME things, can be extremely OPEN-minded about many others. Kilts (and sarongs for that matter), I've found, are one thing that are respected and accepted as important to someone's culture -- and therefore off-limits to name-calling, criticism, or negative comments. (Mind you, I HAVE been laughed at -- but generally by children and teens who know no better, even of their OWN culture and history, let alone someone else's).

The only place I've ever had any kind of negative comment has been in my native land of Canada, where a pickup truck full of young'uns just leaving the bar, yelled across the parking lot and called me another word denoting "a bundle of sticks."

[O'Callaghan]

Thank you Cygnus, you beat me to it. Not only has the geographical area of Flanders itself varied through the years, those who claimed it to be part of their "throne" have varied as well, including the Dutch and French predominantly. As a matter of fact, my surname namesake was the first "Forrester", Richard Forrester (Ricardus Forrestarius) was the brother in law to William the Conqueror (by Richard's sister Maude) and one of his first lieutenants during the 1066 Norman Conquest invasion, after which Richard was granted great lands from Stirling through Lothian to Berwick and points south (Bambrough Castle), which is how our name reached the Scottish lowlands and subsequently became Scottish and northern English (Northumberland mostly).

But I digress. Sorry for the second thread jack.

jeff

I realise that. I was just having difficulty understanding why you identified as Dutch when present day Vlanderen is part of Belgium.

I am no historian, but I knew that at least at the time of the battle of Agincourt a large part of France plus Wallonia (now the French speaking part of Belgium) formed the independent Duchy of Burgundy, and that Belgium did not exist back then.

I tried to find a tartan representing Belgium, but all I could find was one for Flanders itself, which is ITI number 2531, or, believe it or not, the Belgian UFO tartan, ITI number 7418! If nothing else, the Dutch Friendship tartan is probably more readily available than either of those.

[Bugbear]

I'm single... and probably will stay that way. For a while I objected to myself wearing the kilt, but have begun to allow myself to wear a contemporary one from time to time...

[seanachie]

Maybe that's why we've lasted in Japan for nearly a decade... Eastern cultures, despite being very closed-minded about SOME things, can be extremely OPEN-minded about many others. Kilts (and sarongs for that matter), I've found, are one thing that are respected and accepted as important to someone's culture -- and therefore off-limits to name-calling, criticism, or negative comments. (Mind you, I HAVE been laughed at -- but generally by children and teens who know no better, even of their OWN culture and history, let alone someone else's).

The only place I've ever had any kind of negative comment has been in my native land of Canada, where a pickup truck full of young'uns just leaving the bar, yelled across the parking lot and called me another word denoting "a bundle of sticks."

Never thought about that, but seems to be a lot of truth to what you are saying. I had not one negative comment anywhere is China. Many places I visited people wanted there picture taken with me, even when it was inconvenient I tried to oblige. The one picture I wish I had was from Xian. I was approached by a number of elderly men who were part of Mao's cadres. They knew no English but were obviously talking about the kilt, I proffered my hand and they enthusiastically shook it. There were communist officials around so my wife defered on the camera....

sorry for the slight thread detour

[ForresterModern]

I realise that. I was just having difficulty understanding why you identified as Dutch when present day Vlanderen is part of Belgium.

Simple. We are not talking about today's political relationships but those of when my family was nobility in Flanders over 1000 years ago. Back in the day when my progenitors were Counts of Flanders it was predominantly considered part of the Dutch conglomerate of nobles under Dutch royal oversight, with occasional transfers of allegiances/ownership back and forth with the various french rregimes. As it happens, current Flanders abuts the portion of Holland that my wife's mother and father were from before they married and immigrated to the US in the 1960s and begetting my wife. So it is likely, with the endless changing of land boundaries both by the nobility and royalty of the time that our neighboring lands were more than a few times conjoined, and thus my wife's family and my ancestors have "common ground" so to speak, and we choose use the DFT as the sign thereof. Our choice, some may disagree with the logic, but there it is.

If I were only interested in current situations as to what tartans to wear I would likely not wear any, as my people have been in America and non-kilt wearers for 14 generations, and then predominantly in Northern England or Southern England north of London for another scad of generations before you can trace back to the scottish years just less than 1000 years ago. Our family was never considered a clan, were nearly exclusively lowlanders and not likely to have ever worn the kilt, was allied at times to the Douglas (famous lowland and border clan) and alledgedly to the MacDonald but I can prove no direct ties to either, although I do wear their tartans. Our "family" tartans were developed over the last 50 years, and our "clan" technically has no chief or claimed armigers, and honestly not a whole lot of members in the loosely organized group. So I reach for the remaining threads of that portion of my ancestry that I know about, wear the modern machination of our family "tartans", along with several variants of Douglas and MacDonald, as well as the DFT, because of the loose connections to each purely historically. Otherwise I guess I should be wearing overalls and smoking a corncob pipe, since Virginia/West Virginia hillibillies is what the majority of the last 14 generations were until my father moved out of the coal "holler", got an education, moved northward and raised a family, including me.

So I will throw it to the crowd to weigh in as to whether I should wear the kilt at all, and if so which of the tartans I mention above am I "entitled" to wear in a kilt. Not that anybody else's opinion really matters to me, thank you.

jeff
Again, sorry for the threadjack.

[castledangerous]

...she points out so many things that existed in China well before they were introduced in China. <snip>

Huh?