First and foremost, to understand this post, you need to check out http://www.angusmohr.com/home.html and take a short listen to some of this band's music.

I'll wait.

There. Now that you have gotten a small taste of Angus Mohr- they are, by the way, a Colorado based band- I can explain my revelation. Angus Mohr hosted their first annual Angus Mohr's Christmas Party tonight, which is an invitation only event that I just got home from. (I know... no pictures, didn't happen. My wife managed to close our camera in the car door before the show, destroying it. Ah well...) So there I was, sitting in my seat with my daughter bopping along to the song that the band were on stage belting out, and I noticed all the modern kilts- the Utilikilts, the Amerikilts, the other kilts, all mixed in with more traditional kilts, and it occured to me- this is our culture! We have had so many discussions on this board about American Celtic culture, and have had some lambast it as a caricature of Scottish culture and some kind of latent teen angst, wannabe tribalistic joke, but the reality is- tonight, I saw a real community celebrating together. We were having our own celidh, and although there were the traditionalists (I always follow tradition at events like Christmas parties) there were the very modern New World Celts looking very New World, and we all existed side by side, shared whiskey, song, played with each others kids, chatted like old friends- and the revelation was, this is what culture and community are all about. I didn't know the names of more than 4 people there other than the band and my family, but I was there with about 400 friends. I read articles like that one posted on here recently, that Tartan Tryhards article, and it bothers me that we in America are perceived as tryhards (implying wannabes of some kind) which shows a woeful misunderstanding of us. We are not a community wanting to be Scottish at all. I realized tonight that we have really become our own Celtic nation.