[HPFGU-OTChatter] Central Texas & German Festivals

[Amanda]

Dinah had groaned
>
> *groans* Just what is it with Americans  and
> pseudo-german culture? I mean, embracing foreign
> culture and experiencing new ethnic traits is alright,
> but this completely baffles me. What you are
> celebrating over there is here only interesting to the
> generation of over 55 and up to 100.
<snip rest of groan>

Penny defended the German residents of Texas and their festivals thusly:

Central Texas was heavily settled by German (and Czech and Polish)
immigrants in the mid to late 1800s.  Many of these communities are
*still* highly German in culture.  In fact, in many of the homes,
German is still spoken as the primary language, several generations
later.  My sister's roommate is from New Braunfels and is bi-lingual.
It's not so much celebration of a "foreign" culture in those
communities; it's a celebration of their ongoing heritage.  They've
retained a strong connection with Germany all these years.  It's also
not something that is limited to the older generation.  When you
attend the German festivals in Central Texas (mainly in the fall),
it's quite obvious that a huge number of the residents, even the
younger ones, speak German and continue to identify strongly with
German culture.

Amanda may be able to comment further.

(Amanda blushes, digs toe in dirt) Aww. How can I refuse such an invitation
to hold forth? But really, Penny summarized it beautifully. It isn't
something the residents of Texas saw, wanted, and tried to appropriate; it's
something that they *are.*

It *is* a source of lingering disgust to me, here on the Polish side of the
equation, that the cultural stereotype happens to be true and the Germans
just *are* better organized, which is why most of the little festivals are
German (not Czech or Polish) and why the local theme park Fiesta Texas has a
German area and not a Polish. Fully as many Poles settled this area as
Germans, and there is still much speaking of Polish (witness the many, many
conversations I overhear and cannot understand after mass, which we attend
in the little town of St. Hedwig). There are plenty of household traditions
that carry on their European precedents; the festivals are just community
extensions of this.

Why do people always seem to think that any sort of festival harking to
European, Asian, etc., traditions, *must* be "pseudo" of some kind? You want
pseudo, go to some of those American Indian extravaganzas, supposedly
native. Americans are not born "tabula rasa"s, to then go out and seek the
culture they'd like to emulate; we are born to them as much as anyone else.
Most of us have the option of several. And why should anyone give a damn if
they have horse hips, if they have a blast dancing the polka? [It would
probably be ethical to warn people to get out of the way; I generally do].

--Amanda, fifth-generation Texan on her father's side (eligible for
Daughters of the Republic of Texas, if she'd only get her butt in gear and
do the documentation) and Southerner on her mother's (eligible for Daughters
of the Confederacy, I believe, with similar caveat), and married to a man of
entirely Polish extraction (all grandparents were immigrants from Poland),
who loves to refuse to check "Caucasian" on forms on the reasonable grounds
that there is not a drop of Caucasian blood in him, only Slavic. On the
recent census, I wrote in a category for my kids, "Polish American," just to
give the government a little heartburn.