Identity in the Scottish Diaspora

[Dollander]

I just joined a few days ago, but I've been following this thread as a lurker. So if I may go back a sub-topic or two, I have to say that I'm a little envious of Canada since we Scottish-Americans don't remotely have the same cultural connection. Though perhaps that's part of why my Scottish heritage intrigued me, since the rest of my ancestry seems passé by comparison. I mean, Italian, German, Irish...heck, if I were to marry a woman who's Polish and Black, our children would be perfect demographic representations of New Jersey.

Still, the main reason would be this:

Scotland is the selected ancestry because it is the only one that has a clearly definable culture that is cool. If you go back to my g'g'g'grandparents, they are about 1/2 Ulster Scots/Scots (Mom's side) and about 1/2 English/Welsh (Dad's side). What would it look like for me to celebrate my English heritage? Morris dancing? My Welsh heritage? Choral singing? Those things can't compete with tartan and kilts and bagpipes.

Substitute lederhosen and polka, or wine and pasta, or whatever else, and that's pretty much how I feel. Even the more recent PA Dutch culture was long gone by the time my father's family moved from Western Maryland to the Delaware Valley. And while my maternal great-grandparents were all born in Italy, the only thing that'd culturally mark me as even Italian-American is a tendency to refer to tomato sauce as "gravy". Ultimately I can't really explain why it captivates me so, any more than I can explain why I prefer punk rock to heavy metal or Star Wars over Star Trek. But ever since that fateful day in my early teens when we happened upon a Scottish cultural festival at a college my stepsister was checking out, it awakened something in me, something stirring in the deepest parts of my psyche that feels...I don't know, it just feels right.