To clear up the "American's don't describe themselves as American" thing, something Kevin left out is that it's more not being described as ONLY American. "African-AMERICAN", "Asian-AMERICAN", etc. It's because in school we're taught that USA is a "melting pot" full of cultures mixed together. Of course, this also lends itself as fuel for "us vs them" racist views in a lot of people, but it's also good for polling to show how family-level culture affected how someone voted. Edit: Also, it's more of a "what do you identify as", kind of thing so it depends on how much you've been influenced by your parents'. Someone that has immigrated is more likely to consider themselves [original nationality]-American, where their children born here might describe as just American if they're not attached much to the original culture.
this slice of shlt that is brainbiddes acted persona has only informed me of 1 thing.... Simon has never peeled a vegetable in his whole adult life otherwise he would understand the value and convince of a sink shredder ready and waiting for you to drop your wedding ring into it and making you so distressed you fail to notice your toddler you were bathing in the other sink fumbling with the wall switch as you desperately push your hand deeper into the hole that destroys everything you've placed into it so far?..... its still worth it you can peel a cucumber under the water stream and never stop for peels sounds stupid till you are makin 100 jars of pickels... americans grow stuff an can it
I had no idea our funeral practices were weird. My wife was cremated, but right after she passed the hospital invited me to visit her body. Which I did, and I'm glad I did. I said goodbye. I gave her a last forehead kissy. It may be weird, but I'm glad I got that opportunity to say goodbye
Yeah I'm British and that's not at all weird here, in fact it's perfectly normal and expected. Simon is just incredibly lucky never to have had these experiences.
We have a time scheduled before the funeral that you can go to the mortuary to say your good byes and the casket is open. But at the funeral service it is shut.
The deal with open caskets in the good ol USA started during our civil war. So many families lost sons in that terrible war, and because capitalism, embalming technology grew to fulfill the need of families that lost sons far away and wanted to be able to have their bodies shipped by rail to their home towns so they could see them again. And, in America we have door mats, and I grew up on a ranch so we always had boot scrapers on the porch so people are, of course, expected to clean their shoes or boots well before coming in. Many homes even have a "mud room," especially in snowy areas, where you can clean or change your shoes, boots, or rubber boots and leave your cold weather or work clothes there.
In Utah, just about every building has a "mud/wet room" even the school I work in. Every business has an extra space in the entrance to scrape snow and mud off your boots, because they don't want ANYONE taking their shoes off inside. We have these in our homes and apartments too. Why anyone would ever have mud on their shoes and be inside a home is beyond me. Kevin seems to not know much for living in the US. I didn't like this episode
Old farm houses are not historically known for carpeting, I grew up with hard wood floors and area rugs that if they became dirty could be removed and cleaned.
@@Ulysses_DM_ The old farm house I lived in did have carpet that was installed in the 60s or 70s. Prior to that they did have "carpet" that wasn't attached that could be rolled up for dances. I'm not sure if they actually meant carpet or a large rug. Upstairs 3 of the 4 bedrooms are hardwood, the one has orange shag carpet.
I'm Irish we embalm anything that hasn't moved in 10 minutes. I've lost count of how many dead bodies I've seen and touched from a very young age. Lol we find it strange if the coffin is closed. And yes I live in Ireland too.
Happy to see another irish comment. I didnt realize it was actually a thing until I saw my grandmother as an adult, I just thought it was a weird american tv thing. After the funeral my mom said when we were kids she didn't think it was appropriate, but now we were adults we could deal with it. The whole thing was extremely surreal.
My Irish friend who died recently began his embalming process at age 16 the first time we went to the pub. He was pickled good and proper. He joked that he would be far too dangerous and flammable for cremation. RIP Colin.
I (Scottish) find it weird you’d not want to say goodbye. I understand not wanting to see a dead relative and wanting to remember them as they were. For me, seeing my Nan, mum and uncle and being able to say my goodbyes to them (even if you do see it as a bag of meat) was cathartic for me. I think it’s completely normal to want to pay respects and say goodbye. It’s also ok to not want to do that. Please don’t make people feel bad about wanting to say their goodbyes. It’s ok!
In Ireland it's normal to have a wake. Open casket, friends and family around talking about the memories we share of the deceased. There's usually food and drink too, so to people from foreign countries it's like a weird party with a body. For Irish people though, it's an important part of the grieving process and a celebration of the person's life, sharing stories, jokes the person would tell, lessons we learned from them. In a three year period I lost my 3 remaining grandparents and 2 uncles, and the wake before we buried each was incredibly important.
@@batboy-xf3ki lol, not sure tbh. Probably evolved from something different like giving the dead person time to wake up if they truly aren't dead or something
It's worth recognizing that in areas with a lot of snow, the houses may be equipped with a mud room where you can put on and take off your outdoor clothes without tracking the mud and snow inside.
I have a mudroom too , though it doesn't snow here often. Rather we tend to get lots of mud. Freaking red clay mud no less, walk around in that stuff for a couple minutes and you'll end up four inches taller.
In terms of the whole 'Where are you from' thing I can say it is the same in Australia. We just accepted in school that if you are here then you are Australian so the point of the question was finding out someone's background. I had 2 Chinese kids in my year 12 English class that pretended to be unable to speak English, my teacher didn't know what to do or how they handed in homework. Smartarses skipped a ton of work and the teacher never realized they were literate in not 2 but 3 languages. I found out when one of them asked where I was from...😂
In Australia..... my parents were Northern and southern Irish.... my wives parents were Croatian and Serbian!! Should have been total war. But we were all Australian. Btw: we had these devices called doormats ... some even had " welcome" written on them! You could wipe your fkn feet! Awesome high- tech cultural innovation eh?
As an Australia born Chinese, I've always found the where are you from question super patronising , because the question immediately after was 'How long have you been living in Australia?'. Whenever I ask the question back they'll literally say they were born here and not their ethnic heritage. So it always just felt like some backhanded way of saying I didn't belong.
In America, sorry US of AMERICA, We tend to be a a bit of a closeted xenophobes that will readily rip off your culture and Borg it as our own. And at the same time shamelessly stereotype those cultures. The people who really got screwed over the most were the ones living here when it was "discovered". Something Australia also knows all to well.
I feel like the heritage thing has a lot to do with how young the US is. Being that many/most Americans are fewer than 5 generations removed from elsewhere, there's a certain unexplained pride in how we ended up being born in North America. My grandmother, who will be 90 this year, still remembers her grandparents speaking German and Swedish when she was a kid. It's a strange phenomena of people being proud to be American, but identifying with their overseas roots. I have several cousins that live in Ireland that we didn't even know existed until my aunt did some research, paid a bunch of money to a genealogy company, and contacted them. She went over there to meet them, and now we know a bit more about where our family is from thanks to photo albums, and family history.
does anyone else want to see a Danny/Kevin debate script where they go back and forth between them talking about a topic paragraph by paragraph in a tongue and cheek way? I think that'd be really fun to watch! :).
I would love to see that! But I would hate to see the nervous breakdown that would cause Simon to have. I love his tangents, rants, off key singing, and the content on all of his other channels just to see it sacrificed for one epic video. However, if it was done in a way where they both would write scripts on the same topic and for Simon to read them section by section back to back so we could see into all three of their opinions would be amazing as well. Then have Sam's fine vintage memes to go along with it all would top it off nicely.
I would hate it to end up as a death battle - keep them both doing good things! Maybe SW having some sort of, who gets to see sunlight for a couple of mins a month? # FreeDanny
Not everyone forgets their roots when they come to America. I live where there is a strong Mexican community and they are proud of being Mexican as they are American. They keep their traditions and ways. In a lot of careers it's a asset to be bilingual Spanish/English speaker. Even American born Bruce Lee still had connections to China back when it was British Hong Kong.
I agree and think that is one reason why America is great. We can celebrate being American and also celebrate are heritage. Im mainly Scottish and all my children have Scottish names. I’m proud to be Scottish and proud to be American.
It’s a giant mix bag on shoes inside in America. BUT... I have called out my Romanian neighbors for leaving their shoes outside their door. We live in Florida. There’s no telling what sort of critters could crawl in a shoe parked overnight outside your door. (Roaches, scorpions, snakes, etc) Best you leave them inside your door, not outside
I feel like all of the heritage stuff in the US is short hand for asking "what kinda stuff did you celebrate growing up?" 'cause yeah it's been 3 generations since your family lives in whatever place, but oftentimes this means your grandparents dictated what traditions you observe and other stuff like that. It's just easier to get a picture ask what the person's heritage is
Not to mention, obviously other countries have immigrants, I'm not an idiot, but America is literally a country of immigrants, and several areas STILL reflect the cultures of the people who originally settled there. I live in Michigan, from what I have seen we have more polish and Mediterranean food than most other places (in addition to the Italian, Mexican, Chinese etc that's all over America) because we have a larger polish, and middle eastern population than most areas.
The shoe thing in America; I think is regional and largely up to the individual situation. In Georgia where I live it pretty common to ask people to remove their shoes at the door especially if you have carpet. This is largely due to red mud being a huge issue here and can easily permanently stain and ruin carpets. in more urban environments this isn't as big of an issue because everything is paved. Just my two cents.
I have found it's more a temperature thing and also a class thing. In the areas where there are hardwood floors they keep shoes on more than where there is carpeting. If there is snow shoes get removed but if there is sand they stay on etc...
I’m from -NY and brought up Polish it’s tradition to remove your shoes & put on slipper. Plus I grew up on a farm and don’t want muck tracked in the house .
If someone tells me to take off my shoes before coming in their house, I just don't come inside... I don't want to be exposing my feet to their possible athlete's foot germs at their house and if they are at my house, I don't want them taking off their shoes and leaving those germs at my house either... When I was young, my mother's hobby was sewing... This was back when houses had shag carpeting... Pins and needles would sometimes gets dropped into the carpet and they would stay there even after a vacuum cleaner had gone over it... All it took was stepping on one of those ONCE hand having it driven all the way into your foot to impress upon you that it is not advisable to walk barefoot around the house again...
I think this is also partly generational all my 50 and younger friends remove shoes at the door. I grew up in Montana and currently live in Wyoming it's more common for my cohort to remove shoes than to not.
I'm from Australia and when my aunt passed she had a open coffin, people just placed items inside (favorite things) i put in a couple of mills and boon books. she was really into those trashy romance novels and some people petted her hand and said goodbye. then after the service she was cremated along with her belongings that people left.
On air conditioning. In the United States, it isn't just hot, but it is humid too. So some days, it can be 100°F, with 90% humidity, no wind, no breeze, little shade and it is sunny from 6am-10pm. It is like this typically from April-October where I live. July and August can be BRUTAL and it isn't unheard of for people to die of heat exhaustion.
I find it interesting that America is ‘known’ for AC but yet I have never had AC (still don’t) and I most people I know might have one window unit- if that. I outside of Chicago. I mean a good chunk of the year it is pretttty hot and humid, but then when I go into a grocery store I shiver the whole time, it’s kind of miserable. Even throughout school, we didn’t have AC. Recently my niece told me they were installing AC in the high school, which has 4 stories, and I immediately remembered my freshman year a boy in my class had a heat stroke in the middle of the class. 😮
I can normally get behind the idea that some of these things are weird... but seeing the body before they're buried can actually do a lot to help people cope with and accept things. I've only (fortunately) had two funerals in my life, for my mom's parents. And I'm extremely grateful to have gotten to see them again before the burial. It helps the imagery you have when you recall them to just "see them like they're sleeping". Because my dad found my grandma dead in the bath. And my parents are getting older now, too, both in their 70s and they've been talking about their funeral plans with my sister and me and they asked if we'd want a viewing if possible and we both said yes. My sister and I both find the idea of seeing someone alive one time and then never again to be like an even greater loss.
I feel a public display of a deceased family member to anyone outside of the family as a very off putting thing. I don't understand people putting themselves through receiving condolences for a couple hours while others are viewing the deceased - I just don't understand why people do that while they grieve.
i find it deeply disturbing. like... i believe you when you tell me someone died, ok? if i see my dad alive and then 2 weeks later i get a phone call from my brother that he died, i don't need to see his corpse. i would very much rather my lasting memory of him be _when he was alive._ and even though they might be made up to "look like they're sleeping," I STILL KNOW THEY'RE DEAD. i still know i'm looking at a cold, lifeless, rotting corpse. i don't want to see my loved ones in that state. i want to see them alive or not at all.
I think it's all very personal and is based on the experiences you've had so far. If you haven't been at a wake or whatever you will probably picture it a lot worse than it is, and I think the idea of it freak people out a lot. In Sweden th common practice is that when a person passes away in a elderly people's home or hospital or whatever, the hospital/home contacts the family and tell you that you can come say goodbye for a certain amount of time before they send the body to the funeral home. You basically go there and show your respects, and then at the funeral the casket is closed (generally speaking). I know a lot of people who have died but I've only gone to one wake, my grandfather's, and it was weird and not weird at the same time. They don't bind the mouth of the dead in Sweden anymore as standard practice, which bothers me (and many others, I know people that don't go to wakes at all bc of it) but otherwise it didn't feel like such a big deal (the viewing, not the death obviously). At the same time, when ny aunt committed suicide when I was 17, her body was not fit for viewing, and the loss gave me complex grief (you sort of become obsessed by the death etc) and I didn't accept that she had died for about 3 years, and in that case, if she had been fit to be seen, it would've probably helped preventing that.
@@heidiiiiiiii what is worse is the people who think it’s OK to take pictures of the person without asking. It is never OK to take pictures and less OK to think is OK to share them especially when the family was never asked. I have an elderly aunt who unknowingly to us and mom took pictures of my dad and then thought it was OK to “gift” mom with copies. Mom made her give her all the copies and made her 100% delete them from phones, computers and the cloud. It’s beyond rude but in her generation people did take “remembrance” pictures at funerals. Another aunt had a freaking album of dead relatives that we once had the misfortune to find 😮
Caitlin Doughtry (of Ask A Mortician) would have a LOT to say about Simon's reactions to open casket funerals. Potential for chaotic fun crossover? Eh, probably not.
5 minutes in and these are totally normal here in Australia. I’m 22 and I’ve seen 6 dead bodies to date, actually helped clean down my grandfather and prepare him for the embalmers in 2019 with several other family members. Trying to dress a body when Rigor mortis has set in is not fun 😅
I'm in Switzerland where funerals are typically closed caskets, but there is sometimes a viewing. When I was 14, a classmate of mine died in an avalanche. There was viewing hours at the funeral home and I chose to go. I walked to the funeral home after school one day and spent about 10 minutes with my classmate's body. Alone for most of that time. I actually found it very helpful. The make up on his lips was strange, but beyond that, seeing him dead helped me actually understand that he was gone.
This is the same I believe for some of us in the US. Others choose to not view or go near the opened casket. I feel like it was personally helpful for me to touch them one last time. Interestingly enough when my parents passed I couldn't touch them. Interesting how different it can be for everyone.
If you think about it, until recent times, and still, in some cultures, people would have wakes and the deceased would be in the best room while company milled around and ate and drank. USians mostly don't do that any more. So, often, the departed could go from alive, to hospital, to casket, without anyone from the family ever seeing them in between. It kinda makes sense to make sure the right person is under your nana's headstone.
@@mumlee0127 I spent the last day my bf of 20 years died with him, couldn't be there after but he went hours after he saw I wasn't there, he said hi to his family and looked to see if I was there, went to bed for the last time. I don't think he wanted to go till I went home.
To me, having an open casket offers a level of closure, in that you can see and feel that the person really isn't there anymore. Especially as a 12 year old when my grandma died, because at that age it's harder to fully comprehend the finality of death despite knowing it logically. Actually seeing her body laying in the casket drove the point home in a way that no words ever could, and it helps the grieving process to have that. My mom was cremated, I never saw her body and for me as a 14 year old that made closure really hard. I saw her alive, suffering but still alive, and then there was a box with ashes in it. There was a disconnect there that was hard to work with at that age, and it would have been easier had there been her physical body to touch and see that she wasn't in there anymore. Another thing, and this isn't super common I don't think but it's something that Caitlin from the Ask A Mortician channel talks about - is normalizing death as a whole. Making it less scary and taboo, or weird as Simon puts it. There's nothing good that comes from viewing death or dead bodies as weird because we're all gonna be one someday. Everyone dies, it's inevitable and treating it like some weird, taboo subject doesn't do anyone any favors.
Since a lot of Americans are first or second generation they likely grew up deeply rooted in the heritage of your grandparents origin country. I’m from Boston, we have Little Italy, Southie which is largely Irish, Chinatown, Koreatown etc.
Nope nope nope. Its just wrong to leave it open. Why do you wanna watch your dead and pay for them to get make up and look like they're alive it's just weird? I'm Austrian
Every country is weird...... Which is exactly what I had to keep in mind when I realized that everything shut down for the queens funeral and how long people were waiting to see her and how long the whole thing lasted.
idk, I think as a American I group myself by my heritage because of how I grew up. I live in a area that has the highest population of Norwegians in one place other then Norway. I grew up eating traditional food from Norway (with a American twist usually of course) , listening to Norwegian traditional music at times, celebrating festivals, listening to my grandma’s generation speak the language fluently, speaking a bit of it myself, and many other things. Its a part of what really defines myself. America is a country of immigrants, many of whom group together in areas, and do their best to keep some traditions alive. Thats at least my take on why people do that here. (sorry for any grammar errors i’m typing this quickly)
My wife's family has very strong Norwegian heritage. They have been here for at least 4 or 5 generations on her mother's side, but they love keeping at least a dash of Norwegian sprinkled into their family traditions as an homage to their heritage. In a weird way, some of these Scandinavian expats are a bit of a time capsule from the old country. A Norwegian (as in from and currently lives in Norway) friend of my SIL visited my inlaws' home and mentioned that they have far more traditional Norwegian decor and stuff than her family did back home.
I honestly thought the viewing period was quite normal. I recently had a friend pass away and somehow viewing it helped come to terms with his passing. It was so sudden that it all seemed surreal until I was able to say goodbye
I can totally understand that sense of closure from the viewing. My Abuela (Nan) died last month, she lived in Spain and I live in Finland, there wasn't a funeral and I still keep thinking she's alive and I want to call her. I feel that if there was a funeral, not necessarily open casket, but a designated day to be near her and with my family to say goodbye would have certainly helped. The only closure I'm hoping to get is going to her villa in a few months to sort of her belongings before we sell her home. She was 81 but her death wasn't expected.
Is he the one Simon mentioned when he talked about how good antibiotics were and mentioned his 90 something year old Granddad having a short hospital visit. I watched that video 2 days ago, I don't just remember everything I watch.
I recently learned during a trip to Peru that they don't drink cold milk. I asked for some with my chocolate cookie dessert and they thought I was crazy. They brought me a tiny tea cup of hot milk and couldn't fatham driving it cold.
The identity thing has a lot to do with how we are tied to our history, and how tightly and intentionally our communities used to be segregated and how gentrification still works. But in the southern U.S. it does add a certain flavor in certain areas. Since our culture is effectively a culmination of immigration and migration (and the fact we effectively erased native culture for the most part) certain areas like central Texas have a heavy emphasis on German history and East Georgia has a huge Irish presence. Heck in Savannah, GA they still bring people from Ireland in order to live and play on the local rugby team. Europe has all the history and doesn’t need to look backward as much. The U.S. is a much younger country made up of immigrants. That’s really why we are so big on that.
on top of the above, there is also the drive to prove that your family is full White as opposed to light-skinned POC or passing. I didn't think even slavers were dumb enough to confuse sicilians and Africans, but apparently anything less than milk white had to be proven...and I continue to underestimate the depths of stupid
Exactly what I was going to say, seeing my father in his casket allowed me (as a child) to understand the finality of his death. I understand it may seem a bit morbid to some, but I needed that moment to see that he was truly gone.
See, I think in the US with the nationality thing, you pretty much know someone’s general family life, behavior, and traditions by asking them what nationality is in their family background and because there’s such a wide variety of combinations of traditional and national ancestry it can make it sort of unique to each family. Idk though we’re weird
I lived in the US my whole life and this is news to me. I’ve only been asked about my nationality a couple times and it really weirded me out because I honestly didn’t know anything about my “heritage” or whatever, and still don’t. Uh, I’m white, celebrated Christmas but never really went to church. My parents love the traditional American sports, but I don’t. We were middle to upper-middle class, and they definitely think they earned it purely by hard work, but I’m pretty sure that’s more of like, a generational thing than anything to do with nationality. Is that enough for you to complete your picture of “who I am” or do you want me to keep going? Sorry I can’t condense it down to a one-word label. (Maybe my parents did something right after all…)
@@jcorkableThere's millions of Americans who are second and 3rd generation immigrants, and whose families still speak the language and practice the culture of their original nation/people. There's also a ton of communities and neighbors made up mostly or entirely of families of similar heritage (Norwegian, Vietnamese, Indian, Irish, Bosnian, etc.) So in a lot of cases, heritage is extremely important to many, many Americans, be they citizens by birth, naturalized, or otherwise.
My mom's family got incredibly mad at her because she was handling the arrangements for my uncle after he died, and he didn't have a will that stated whether he wanted to be an organ donor or not. Mom decided that it's what he would have wanted, so she allowed them to take whatever they thought would be useful. Unfortunately, the funeral home screwed up and left him out unrefrigerated for way too long before the funeral, so the fluids started to leak out of where they had taken some skin for a burn victim before the embalming. Because of this, they couldn't have an open casket funeral, and they blamed my mother for it because she agreed to the donation rather than the funeral home who left him out too long! My mom still hadn't forgiven them for how they treated her, and I can't blame her.
Your mom should be mad at both the funeral home _and_ her own family for being such morons that they were willing to completely ignore such a significant detail just so they could have someone to voice their unhappiness to in person. That's the only reason I can think of, btw, that would explain their behavior aside from genuinely being stupid as hell (which I only tend to believe as a last possible resort, regardless of who I am talking to because name calling never solves anything or inspires personal growth in anyone).
Your example of the cops stopping at the state line was actually a thing back in the day. If you could make it to the state line, you were practically Scot free for a lot of minor offenses.
This hasn’t been a thing in any state that I have lived in the past four to five decades. It’s more a Hollywood thing or urban legend. It would take less than 5min researching for this video for him to have realized he should have left this out
And even if they did have to end pursuit at the state line, there are cops in the next state too, they’d be completely willing to pick up the pursuit and hand the person over to the original jurisdiction
I have to say with the shoe thing, I completely agree. I always take my shoes off at home but at other people's homes, I leave my shoes on unless expressly asked to take them off. The exception of course is if the shoes are wet from rain or snow. I never realized this was an odd thing to do here.
American. This is new. Really new. I’m 60. We NEVER ever, took off our shoes. Wasn’t even a thought in our heads. I started noticing it about maybe 10 years ago, my sons friends would take off their shoes. I’m like Why are you doing that ? lol. And I would never in a million years ask my COMPANY to take off their shoes! People are freakazoid about their floors/germs. Omg.
I think the thing that gets missed with the nationality thing when it comes to America is that when a lot of groups immigrate here they tend to all move to the same area. So you get people who refer to themselves as German because they grew up in a place where German immigrants founded it and they frequently eat German food and quite a few of them also speak German particularly the older generations. So you end up with little pockets of people who all came over from the same country keeping a lot of their old traditions though they do get warped over time.
Exactly! People tended to group up together and they were proud of where they came from so they passed it down. So you get a lot of people born and raised in New York but claim to be Italian, Puerto Rican, etc. and if anyone does claim to be American it comes off as Native American. It’s all weird
I think another oft forgotten point to other countries, is how immensely large our country is. The distance from like England to France isn't much different than say, Michigan to Pennsylvania, but in the European case people change from British to French, but for Americans... still the same. And on the extreme end the difference from New York City to Los Angeles is about the same as Belfast, Ireland to Alexandria, Egypt, in the first case, your flight never leaves America, in the later you cross France, Switzerland, Greece, and the Mediterranean Sea. On the other hand it isn't uncommon to split "Where are you from?" "What's your ethnicity?" the former will often get a response of a state while the latter would get a different-non America country or a hyphenated to American, i.e. Irish-American, Italian-America, German-American, etc.
1. We call ourselves American because what else should people call us? USAsians? Unies? Think of it as shorthand. 2. We are a melting pot because compare our demographics against any other European country. 3a. We aren’t calling ourselves Italian, Chinese, etc. We’re just short-handing the hyphenations. We have this convo frequently because as a #2 melting pot it is interesting. UK is 90% white and 9/10 of those whites are UK decedents. Pretty boring. 3b. We had to cross an ocean to get here. Immigrant families fought hard and sacrificed to make it to the US. They told and retold this story of sacrifice to every following generation. Americans value that struggle and it’s part of the reason we hold on to the hyphens. We want to recognize both the history of our families and the present.
@@levig6238 I don't think they claimed calling ourselves American was weird, if for no other reason than that is the no-shit official national identity name of someone from the US. The thing they were quibbling about was saying you're FROM America, like we're claiming two continents as our one country. I grey it, but come on, it's even in our damn name. It'd be one thing if our country was only called the United States and we just hijacked "America" all for ourselves, but it's in our official name!
Americans are so fascinated by their ancestral lineage bc America IS such a melting pot. Americans are generally very intermingled when it comes to their ancestry they get curious; also their ancestral culture has been blended into everyone else's to make American culture ie the melting pot
The majority of americans' ancestors were immigrants. Usually immigrants who left their homes trying to make a better life for themselves and in some cases it was their only chance for survival. Our history as a nation is also very short so the odds of having a strong connection to your ancestors' culture is pretty good.
My family came over straight from England. The "Martindales" fought in every single major war there has been. My direct lineage can be traced to men who fought in the Revolutionary war, the civil war, WW1, and WW2. They left England due to not wanting to conform with the church, and they even helped found one of the new churches in the colonies (can't remember which one). My mother side came over from Hungary only 3 generations ago. My great grandma was straight Hungarian. They came in through Elis Island with almost nothing at all. I absolutely love both of those stories, and I love to learn about my fellow Americans families and their journeys. Heritage is important, nationality is important as well, but we cant forget where we come from. We cant forget those that paved the path for us. Thank you ancestors.
So well put, and I think you just explained it for me. I too, grew up asking people this. In certain situations, not just random folks you meet in school, etc.
A couple things I learned (or came to realize) about America while I lived in Europe that might help explain some things to people who aren’t Americans, and why we are so damn strange to other countries. 1) We refer to ourselves as Americans because, in English, that is our proper name. The description “United Statsian” doesn’t exist in English, so we call ourselves American because really, it’s all we’ve got. 2) We often refer to ourselves by our national or ethnic background, and I think this has a lot to do with the fact that US citizenship laws are very different than those in many European countries. In the US, if you are born on US soil, you are a US citizen (with very few exceptions to this law) and it doesn’t matter what your parents nationalities are, while in Europe the opposite is true. I had a friend born and raised in France but his parents were Polish. Despite the fact he’s never lived in Poland, he was Polish because his parents were and that’s what determines his citizenship. Americans refer to their nationality or ethnicity because it is generally given that if you are in America, you are American, and many people still hold onto a sense of vague pride for their ancestral country. 3) We have air conditioning for good reason. Generally speaking, the US falls under a climate classification of “Warm continental” or “Hot continental” or even “subtropical”. In most of the US our summers are hot, long, and usually pretty humid. Summers without AC are miserable for most of the US. Meanwhile in Europe, the entire continent (more or less) falls under either the “cool continental”, “maritime”, or Mediterranean” climate, which have much more tolerable summers that are generally fairly cool and wet (compared to that of the US) with the exception of the Mediterranean climate which has hot summers, but generally low humidity, making them, in general, much more tolerable.
"American" as a descriptor for US Citizens really didn't fall into common use until WWI. Prior to that, you typically identified yourself by your state or region: Virginian, New Englander, Westerner, etc. Before that, we were called "colonists" on the world stage. The idea of a truly united country that identified itself as a united whole didn't really take hold until the Spanish-American War.
I’m with Kevin on the shoes thing - they’re off the minute I walk through my own door, but they stay on until the host asks me to remove them if I’m in their home.
People get here and they don’t ask, they just automatically take them off. Apparently the flagstone inside the door, littered with family shoes, and then the light cream carpet leading upstairs (to the main floor) says it for us.
Because my feet are completely flat (and I have plantar fasciitis to boot), my podiatrist has told me never to go barefoot, even in the house. If my shoes are a mess when I get to the house, I change, other than that, I wear my shoes right in and sweep/vacuum as needed. I went barefoot a lot as a kid and got a number of ugly injuries as a result, even inside the house. I will spare the gruesome details. Didn't stop me from going barefoot, though.
In the USA, we assume everyone here is American unless they have an accent. If asked where you're from, we usually identify by state, but some identify by ethnic heritage. My cousin identifies as Italian American, her great grandparents came from Italy, but she grew up in the community which was settled by Italian immigrants and ethnically is 100% Italian. I'm 25% and grew up with a little more pasta in the family than my friends in the area, but I didn't grow up with the Italian traditions that someone surrounded by the community would have.
yup my nonna was italian. we grew up with italian traditions. along with all the other italian immigrants that came over to the same area. they socialized together so formed a large italian peer group. so all i ever knew was italians growing up. i dont know why this is so hard for kevin to understand. guess he just wants to spout the misinformation anti american tik tok twitter bs.
This! When in the US if someone asks where you are from they mean, which state? It can be impolite to ask a complete stranger where they are from but that doesn’t stop people from asking. This usually happens when the person looks or sounds ‘foreign’. 🙄
For the shoes on/off "debate", I usually use the following rule. Since the owner of the home will enter before me, if they take off their shoes then I follow suit. If they leave their shoes on, I leave mine off too. Personally, no shoes in my house unless it is some sort of repairman or similar.
So the Shoe thing is kinda funny here in USA, I think. Very few places other than towns that are mostly of first-third generation immigrants will have any kind of 'take off your shoes'. But at the same time... you USUALLY take them off after getting inside, unless you plan to go back out soon. Up here in Oregon, and the PNW, it's not unusual to have a pair of slippers to wear inside, as it is usually somewhat nippy around the toesies. But it's often rainy or dusty outside, so you don't want to track that INSIDE. Given most pets can go outside though... you still have to sweep/mop at least once a day in suburban/rural areas. That sound about right to anyone else?
I am from Mozambique, Africa and open caskets are also the standard. There is a viewing time when everyone attending the wake, forms a line to see the dead person and there is usually perfume to spray on the person, lots of singing too (church and funeral specific songs).I don't know the purpose of the perfume and I never thought of that until now. Taking shoes off in other people's houses was common, but I think that is not the case anymore. Sam, great memes as usual and Simon's tangents: Chef's kiss!
i grew up with my home and neighbors/family houses where we take off our shoes and we continue to hold that tradition today…. but, like keven said, if some one were to ask about taking off their shoes in my home (in the “mud room”) i would say it doesn’t matter… why is that?! lol
I always loved funerals as a kid. And yes i know how morbid that sounds but wait it gets worse. In my home country of Romania it's custom to make sweets and other food to give to the "guests", I visited every funeral i my village just so that I can eat sweets. So I went there, pretended to be sad, got myself some Colivă, and then buggered off to eat it in peace while the others where crying and griefing. And surprisingly I wasn't the only kid doing that either.
I live in Singapore. Open casket viewing is very common here, usually for 2 days. Often conducted at a funeral home or, depending on the religion and ethnicity in the common space of public housing estates. Singapore is incredibly diverse, one set of people hold their funerals there, another their weddings. It’s an amazing country.
A funny story. As a kid I learned to take my shoes off when entering somebody's house from anime. I later overheard my mom getting complimented for training me to take off my shoes inside.
Most people have air conditioning because they have heat pumps just like you do in your smancy holiday house Simon! It’s how we heat AND cool our homes. In another episode you commented about how everything in the US is bigger which included bigger houses. Well, when those big ass houses are in Texas or Georgia where the average temp is ‘Warm’ with the other 9 months hitting ‘Hades’, then you’ll be grateful for your AC darlin.
I'm from Canada, and I can confirm the "What country are you from?" question is absolutely real. The thing is, if you were to respond "Canadian" most people would assume that you're an indigenous person/native American. Just about everyone who lives where I do identifies with the country their ancestors came from, no matter how long ago. Around here, to most people, I'm considered French, because my nine-times great-grandfather came from France to North America almost 410 years ago in the 1610s. Although, there is a large community of descendants of the French colonists and no generation of the family has yet lost the French language entirely. It's the same for many other people with different ancestral countries. It's not uncommon here to see random European country flags either flown from houses, on front license plates, as bumper stickers, painted on houses, hung up in houses, on articles of clothing, etc. The people with these often don't even speak the language, they just feel they identify with the country of their forefathers.
My dad was born in Scotland but IAM Canadian..ask my ex whose both sets of grandparents were born here and he'll say he's Irish.. lol. nope dude you just have an Irish last name and keep clinging to a identity passed on through generations.
Both sides of my family and alot of the region i grew up in had mostly people of czech origin. I grew up with my grandparents on both sides trying to teach me the language and the culture, though of course all i remember where the curse words and words for alcohol/beer since we were also proud texans lol
Same! I think in some places, it has to do with the fact that large groups of people from one place were all coming to the US & Canada at the same time? Especially if (as I’m assuming is the case for you, and is also the case for me! We’re almost certainly related in some distant way; my however-many times grandfather was sent to Annapolis-Royale with the French Army), the group of people came from one country specifically to fight a war over who that new place “belongs” to. While I think the whole concept is ridiculous, if you came to “the new world” on a mission to beef over turf with the British, it makes a lot of sense that you’d, a) settle mainly around people of the same nationality as you, b) be homesick since you didn’t even choose to go there, and c) want to emphasize that “I’m not with those other dudes.” Similarly, my family later came down to New England to work in the mills when the industrial revolution started. Groups of immigrants from a bunch of different countries were coming in large groups, and since the mill owners feared that they would compete/cause issues between different nationalities, they literally set them all up in little “mill towns” separated by country of origin. Mills would be all Irish, all Quebecois, all Portuguese, etc. This was as recent as my grandparents’ generation working in mills while young, and I’m the first generation of my family to have English as their first language (my mom’s generation learned them “side by each”- a silly Woonsocket French Canadian saying based on the direct translation of the phrase from French to English- but spoke Quebecois at home until her Memere, who only spoke French, died). A lot of people have similar stories- many of us are not all that far removed from their family’s background.
Yess! Canadian too. My heritage is so far back and just a mix of everything. It pisses ppl off when I reply I'm Canadian. I end up saying my families have been here for so long it doesn't matter where my ancestors are from.
I grew up mixed af, a white grandma, a Latin grandma, and black grandfather's. While also growing up in a primarily Mexican neighborhood, and I got referred to as the "white" one in my family (whatever that means). I've always defined myself as just US American or being a mutt, while the rest of my immediate family ( mom, dad, aunt, and close cousins referred to themselves as black. Basically what I'm saying is, we should stop putting ourselves in ethnic or racial boxes and just live as people.
True. I like learning about my ancestors but it can't become a personality trait. I like to differentiate things like sexuality, race physical features, illness (mental or physical) as a what you are versus who you are
My mom is from the Caribbean and is mixed af and my dad is American with white European ancestors. I refer to myself as mixed 🤷🏽♀️ but definitely American. I really want to, and can, get dual citizenship by descent but it's a little expensive and there aren't that many embassies.
I can only roll my eyes at people who get themselves into a huff over citizens of the United States of America calling themselves "Americans." What the heck else am I going to call myself? "U.S.A.er?" "United States of American?" Why can't people just grow up and stop pretending to be so obtuse?
Open casket funerals aren't just an American scene. It's quite common in other European countries. Here in Portugal it's very common. You have a thing called "the watching" (velório) performed at the Church where you pray for the deceased for the 24h before the burial. We don't do embalming, though.
I live in in the states, and have been a hairstylist for a long time…I’ve been honored to have styled/cut/applied makeup the many loved ones..clients and friends/family even when they’re being cremated and it’s just for the viewing. It’s been so cathartic to give this very last gift of an intimate and personal send off to someone I love, even if I don’t understand the whole American funerary process…toss me in the trash haha!! 😂❤
Regarding shoes, I'm in NZ so it's a mix. Some people are adamant about taking shoes off, others really don't care. Partly because half the people wear jandals year round. In Kyiv, we definitely took shoes off at the door. Partly because quarter of the year they'd be covered with snow and at least another quarter it will be mud.
I think we say things like, "I'm Irish/German/Japanese," etc. because unless you're Native American your ancestory came from somewhere else. When we travel abroad we consider ourselves American, but at home we say we're this and that just for funzies as a matter of familial history. Hell, many groups still stick together even though they're technically American, that's why cities have Chinatown or Little Italy and things like language-specific churches and whatnot. And in a country as huge and diverse as "America" it's just kinda cool. Queens, New York is the most ethnically diverse place on earth. My good friend is from Bosnia but moved here in 2001, his wife immigrated from Cambodia when she was a baby, and both of them consider themselves American. Many MANY African-Americans have been "Americans" much longer than the racist fkheads whose grandparents came to the States after WWII or whenever.
Yea in the Texas county i grew up in it was mostly of czech origin and they were all pround of that but still treated people from different backgrounds like family ( minus the couple racist yet polite dickheads). My grand father had a butchers shop, grocery store, and a ranch and hired who ever wanted the work he didnt care where they came from. He'd get near blind drunk sharing beer, whiskey, and cigars with the african americans who'd help him load cattle for the market after they were done cause he just liked a good honest worker from what my dad told me about him.
@@nickstav08 That's what I'm talkin' about! Imagining Czech families immigrating from lush Bohemia to dusty Lubock with their hearty work-hard/play-hard ethos and generous hospitality is totally a movie I'd watch.
I'm an American. West Virginia native. This video was pretty entertaining, I enjoyed it. Open casket funerals have always the norm here in our area I didnt even think about it being strange or wincy until I saw this video lol. It's not uncommon to touch the dead in their casket ether. One last pat on the old shoulder or hand and what not. And actually, most normal Americans refer to themselves as Americans. I have never met anyone who refers to themselves by their ancient ancestry here 😆
1) Even more bizarre than a viewing in my opinion is taking pictures at a funeral. My friend had a cousin die as a child after being hit by a car. She and her mother repeatedly told me the sad story while showing me the photos of him; one alive and happy, the other of him in the casket. 2) When Braveheart was still popular my father would tell people we were Scottish. We're not.
In the early years of photography (Victorian times) it was not uncommon to have a family portrait taken that included a recently dead relative. Professional photographers would have stands for supporting the body in reasonably life like pose.
I still have not recovered from my in-laws showing up to the funeral with props to take pictures like it was Weekend at Bernie's. It was the trashiest, most disrespectful thing and left me in tears. This was 2010. There were plenty of photos of him. This was just some weird Whiskey Tango BS.
about the ancestry thing... For the most part when people ask me what I am, if I’m abroad I say I’m an American, if I’m inside the US it usually means they want to know my race, which is Japanse.
Victorians used to dress up the corpses of their deceased loved ones and sit them in chairs, sometimes paying a photographer to take a photograph with them.
I'm in Canada, and I went to my grandpa's wake, I guess you would call it. It was in the room he had passed in, right after, and he was still there. Me and a few other family members sat around talking and mostly consoling my grandma. The worst part was that various gasses would randomly escape (usually silently), so he would move a little bit. At least twice I thought he was gonna sit up. Overall though, it gave a sense of realism to the closure. I think it helps your brain move on when you have to process a real event like that. I've had some pretty interesting (to me) dreams about him since, so I think it helped me. Or, maybe it's really bad. I dunno. Is what it is.
To be fair, the origin of the Wake was to basically watch the body for a week or so to ensure that they were actually, really and truly dead. Sometimes the "deceased" would've turned out to be still alive. The practice survived, I think in part, because people in the Victorian Era were obsessed with the idea of being buried alive and so wakes became super popular.
Oh my goodness, the thing about heritage hits so hard. I was asked during school what I was and when I said Canadian and didn't know where my family came from it actually got people calling me dumb and bringing it up for the remaining 2 years in that school. It's a super vivid memory that until just this moment I thought I was weird for not knowing. I'm glad people are just weird.
That was just bullying. It's normal for Americans to find it strange that you don't know where your family immigrated from, but Canada is fully valid answer.
A lot of Americans don’t travel outside of the country, so when an American asks another American where you are from it kinda became where your family is from originally.
I thought when an American asks another American where they are from it's more like what state are you from. I'm from Michigan. So when someone asks me I say Michigan. Most of us don't know where our ancestors really came from. My grandma was convinced that we had Native American ancestry. We do not. A DNA test I took proved that. And I'm not about to go around say well I'm 49% British/Irish, 43% French/German, 5% Scandinavian (maybe Swedish) and the rest unknown North Western European as my test indicates. That's a lot. I'm just going to say, I'm from Michigan. Because that's where I'M from.
@@savagedragon79 most of us trace it back to when we left Europe, or wherever else you came from. That's what defines your historic heritage as an American. However, when someone asks where I'm from, I tell them my state first. If they are asking about heritage that's a different question.
@@kalimaxine I say that "most of us dont know where our ancestors came from" is pretty false. Sure people might pepper some native american in there falsely but for the most part Americans very much know where the majority of their ancestors came from. Especially those of irish or italian heritage, they KNOW where they came from
The United States of America is the only country with "America" in the name. It's not a "superiority" thing to call it that; it's the fact that the US doesn't have any other thing to use as a proper name. What do people expect us to call ourselves? Statesers? Uniteds? Usians? Usians is kind of funny juxtaposed with Cold war history, tbh, lol. Also, thank you Simon for always adding a bit of perspective about the good and the bad around the US, it's basically become a thing here for most of the population to just hate on everything while focusing on the bad without ever actually comparing or acknowledging the good. As wonderfully chaotic and sarcastic as you are, you're one of the few news-adjacent people out there I know I can trust to actually try and keep multiple perspectives on wide subjects in mind, with criticisms not coming from a place of generalities or hate.
Even foreigners (non-US residents) call people from the United States of America, "Americans." I was just watching Queen Elizabeth's funeral and the British reporters all referred to Joe Biden as "the American president." "The United States" can actually be more confusing in certain places. For instance, the long form name for Mexico (translated to English) is the United States of Mexico. Mexicans in Mexico typically refer to people from the USA as "Americanos" and to themselves as "Mexicanos." It would be confusing if they referred to people from the USA as people from "el Estados Unidos" (United States) since "Estados Unidos (de Mexico)" is also part of the long form name for the country of Mexico as well as for the United States of America.
@@heronimousbrapson863 so you refer to the people as states? The technical name for Mexico is United States of Mexico (Estados Unidos Mexicanos). How do Latin Americans refer to the people of Mexico?
@@amy262 I've heard people refer to citizens of the USA as United Stateseans I believe, but back when I did the research (several years ago) I didn't find enough reason to switch over myself. I know the argument is that anyone in North America, Central America, and South America can call themselves Americans, like how you can call people Europeans or Asians, but that's pretty much the only argument that i found that made sense and even then it's kinda past the point culturally where Americans would be used to refer to all residents of the American continents
I feel the American obsession with where our families are from, culturally, has a lot to do with how YOUNG America is as a nation. When was England a nation? 600? 1066? Like that's 7+ centuries of history and cultural identity. America barely has 3 centuries. Even if some of us can find family history that old, most of our families are a LOT younger than that. And I feel like, as humans, this lack of cultural history leaves a lot of us feeling like a big tree with shallow roots. So we want to reach back further, send our roots down deeper, to our oldest family and the culture they inhabited. We want to find out what makes us who we are, because America's overall cultural identity is too young and weak to give us that sense of identity. This is even more important for the millions of African people who didn't choose to come here. It's truly a beautiful thing for modern technology to give black people a way to connect back to cultures that they were stolen from and stripped of. It's literally that America is too young to have a solid cultural identity (unless, of course you're Native American)
Also America does have a lot more recent immigrants. However, there is a racial tinge to the question. I'm an Asian immigrant so I don't have too much with the question although I grew up in Texas since I was a toddler. However for those of Asian descent who are born in the US, to answer with an American city or state and not an Asian country can result in stares or "No, where are you really from?"
@@SEAZNDragon Ugh, a pet peeve of mine. "They said they're from Oakland you dumb #@$&! Where are YOU really from? Ya don't look Shoshone or Paiute to me!" I'm a bit more polite if I say it out loud...
@@SEAZNDragon my grandma was from Asia, South Korea more specifically, anytime i was asked as a kid about my heritage if asked what part of Asia she was from i had to add the South otherwise most people would make jokes about being related Kim Jong-Il and Kim Jong-Un. Once out of school it stopped though
I’m English and I can confirm we have history dating back to 2000+ years ago. And if you wanna count things like stone henge that’s jumps up to over 5000yrs lol. I live in York (The original one) it’s a historic town and also the first capital off England well before London was a thing and it’s surrounded by medieval walls built around 1500-2500yrs ago with several castles. Some predate the roman conquest which was 2000 years ago
@@DanShvons also archaeologists may have found evidence of prehistoric humans living on the underwater landmass that was Doggerland (hilarious name) which used to connect the UK to mainland Europe
Caskets are always open with a Wake in Ireland too, it helps with the mourning process. My English husband can't get his head around it, we both think eachother's cultures are very fucked up on this issue 😂
My hubs died early of a widow maker heart attack when we were in our 30s. Sowe never really had this talk. His family insisted on an open coffin funeral in spite of the fact I was having him cremated but I said okay to this and had him sent to their home town for a second funeral. I was horrified that they brought props and took pictures with him. I understood needing to see him for closure but propping him up with burning cigarettes like Weekend at Bernie's was the most disrespectful thing I had seen. It still makes my blood run cold when they post pics of it and the rest of their "fun" family reunion with red cups around the pool. Those are those cultural differences that don't usually come up in conversation but should.
Live in the US and work for a global company and North America is usually classified as Canada, US, & Mexico. Central America (or LATAM aka Latin America) and then South America. But most people associate "America" synonymous to U.S.
4:15 viewing a deceased loved one also gives you a chance to form a last memory if it's someone you hadn't seen in a long time, who died of a chronic illness, etc and helps with closure for many. I personally think funerals in general are a weird custom but the closure is the one part I understand
I'm in the USA and did not have a garbage disposal growing up. When I was in high school, I moved in with my dad and stepmom, and we kids were responsible for doing the dishes. One thing I always found annoying is that whenever my stepmom would cook hard boiled eggs, she would peel the eggs in the sink and leave the shells in the sink instead of putting them in the garbage can. And I was responsible for cleaning up after her. I asked her many times to throw them away, reminding her that we don't have a garbage disposal. So cleaning up after a grown woman was annoying, and then my dad would always yell at us kids whenever the kitchen sink got clogged, which was also frustrating.
My aunt (in her 60s) had her garbage disposal back up. The person fixed it and told her coffee grounds aren't supposed to go down the drain or garbage disposal. My mom was shocked at her stupidity, because that was known in the 70s.
Its really interesting hearing about how other countries do everyday stuff. I always thought you were the nationality of the country you were born in. Another great video Simon
There are two main system for nationality: 1. You are the nationality of the country you where born in (example USA) 2. You are the nationality of your parents regardless of where you are born (most of the rest of the world but not all). The double standard can create some problem for people born while their parent are in a foregn country, so exceptions are present in many law system to cover it. Some countries also give nationality based on other criteria (not including the pay to get nationality that apply to adult). In the 20th century some countries had laws forbidding citizen from holding additional nationality, so if you were eligible for multiple nationality you had to choose which to keep and which to renaunce. I don't know if any country still had such laws.
I was born in Germany, my dad was in the US army. I've lived in the US for 25 years. I spent maybe 3 or 4 in Germany. I did have Dual Citizenship, and yes by law I had to choose my Citizenship. And since I signed up for selective service, I renounced my German citizenship. It was a kind of weird period in my life to have both, it didn't mean much. I don't have an American birth, certificate but I do have an American SS#. I consider myself American through and through. I'm curious how others see it? Am I German with American citizenship because I was born in Germany? Or am I just an American with a German birth certificate?
My grandfather had a viewing before his funeral (American) absolutely freaked me out. A human being looks different without a soul in it, like it doesn't look the same as a sleeping person. Really blew my mind at the time like we're really just here in flesh suits
Probably more a cultural thing. Were your parents' parents, originally from the UK? Perhaps it was something handed down generation to generation. Your name sounds rather Germanic and it's typical to take your shoes off when entering a house in Germany; so perhaps that's the reason?
Growing up in Quebec we always removed our shoes when visiting friends and choose from the basket of guests slippers which ones we wanted to wear. Usually they where crocheted or knitted slippers
I'm a born and raised poor American and I have never had a garbage disposal, a mechanical dishwasher (always done by hand) and only have family (never guests) remove their shoes during WINTER only. I hate stepping in random slush while walking through our little 900 square feet house.
Embalming became common practice during the US Civil War so the bodies of fallen soldiers would still be recognizable enough to be identified by the families. The US is a BIG place and even though it was only half the size then, it could still take weeks or months for the bodies to get where they needed to be. The practice continued because people became more mobile and families started to get more spread out. Since it could take several weeks to gather everyone for the funeral, even if it was a closed casket funeral, it would be quite smelly if the body hadn't been embalmed (esp in the days before refrigeration).
The “Where are you from?” Question in The States is generally less of a question of where you were literally born, and more a question of what culture you were raised up in.
Depends on where you are. In places like Florida with a lot of in-migration, odds are good that if you say “where are you from” the answer won’t be “Florida”
@@billybobhouse9559 America is a big place with radically different regional cultures. Someone raised in Colorado had a very very different childhood than someone who was raised in Florida who also had a different experience than someone raised in Connecticut
@@billybobhouse9559 Other than white people, No. the indian american, african american, chinese american experience is so supremely different from the white american experience. In america there are entire towns that are mostly of one ethnicity, or religion, or some other form of culture. “china town” is a real thing. Yes, they occasionally all interact with each other, but we are experiencing life in entirely entirely different ways.
I was taught that the open casket thing comes from back before people really understood how to make sure someone was really dead. So we would lay the body out, usually in the home of a loved one, and the family would take turns staying awake to watch for any signs of life. Hence the term "wake". The casket isn't open at the actual funeral. Its usually only open at the wake or viewing hours the day before. I personally feel like seeing them one last time gives me closure.
One documentary I watched told stories of how people would be buried when they weren't actually dead yet. And they'd have to break out of the casket and dig their way out of the ground in the cemetery. AAAAAAANNNNNDDDDD...that's where vampire and zombie stories came from???
There was such a thing. Look up catalepsy. Before we understood comas and even the very rare disease catalepsy far too many people died while trying to claw their way out of coffins. This is why wakes exist.
@@targard.quantumfrack6854 as an alcoholic I don't see any of the signs of drunkenness - no slurring, he doesn't repeat himself, he can move along with the topic despite his tangents. It's in all likelihood his usual personality and some speculate it's heightened by other substances, but it definitely isn't alcohol in my view
Oh hey, we have garburators in Canada too. Also I have an uncle from the States who visits and we had to ask him to take his shoes off a lot before he caught on. Usually this is accomplished by asking "Oh can I take your shoes for you?" or "You can just leave your shoes by the door" in the most passive aggressive way ever
What's worse is even if you decide to go the cremation route, most states require the body to be embalmed by law. What a tremendous waste (not to mention the noxious chemicals released when the embalmed body is burned). Still cremation is the way to go, you don't have to pay for a grave plot and the whole thing is just cheaper. My father passed a few years ago, he was cremated and it cost us all total something like $2500. My mother in law passed a few years before then and her regular open casket funeral was over $12k ... and it wasn't all that fancy.
@@EclecticDD I stand corrected. I believe this used to be the requirement in Kansas (where I reside) but is only required now if you plan to have a public viewing of the body before cremation.
The ethnicity thing in America does get a bit weird. Personally I never identified as anything because I'm kind of a mix of everything, so when people asked me I just said "I don't know." The Irish one seems the weirdest to me. A LOT of Irish people came to America in the 19th century. If you are a white person in America, there's probably like a 90% chance you have at least one ancestor from Ireland. If you're a black person in America, there's probably like at least a 15% chance you have at least one ancestor from Ireland. How does that make you special if it's a trait you have in common with basically everyone else?
The liberal bent of the writer is showing. There is absolutely a basis for "race" in genetics, and research into that is important for the medical field. Genetic background helps give information on susceptibility to a variety of diseases and drug complications; in emergency situations knowing that a drug might cause an adverse reaction in someone with e.g. Japanese ancestry while it might be statistically safe to use on a European is valuable. Only an American upper middle class neocommunist with a MacBook and a desk job would go around claiming that race or sex doesn't exist.
I just want to say thank you to whomever adds that last little bit of Simonie goodness to the closing seconds of each video. I stick around for that and your efforts do not go unnoticed.
He's wrong about paying for the funeral, if you have life insurance usually what you do is hand the policy over to the funeral home and they will process it with the insurance company, take what they're owed from it and forward the rest on to you.
@@Its0kToBeWhite Yes, they're legally required to give you what's left over. Otherwise that would be theft. If you walk in with a $50,000 life insurance policy and the funeral is $10,000 then yes, they have to give you the $40k or go to jail.
@@Its0kToBeWhite It just depends on the policy. It’s not that expensive to carry a $10k policy. Then if the person just gets cremated and doesn’t have a service it’s just a little over $3k. The funeral home is going to try to upsale you, but that’s where properly preplanning comes in. Hell, you can even prepay then the life insurance policy becomes a “Have some fun on me” policy (which the funeral home would still be happy to help you cash most of the time).
There is also specific burial insurance which is not the same a life insurance. The fuck I would let a funeral home have the life insurance check and give the family back the difference. Also never let a funeral home know how much you have to spend because they will try to get you to spend it all.
24:10 regarding air conditioners in the north; I live in a northern Canada city and no one enforces building code violations so I'm living in an apartment complex where half of the tenants including me don't have windows that lead outside, when it's -10C outside it's 40C inside and I've been running my AC non-stop since January. Also viewing the dead at funerals and filling the corpses with embalming fluid is super weird, I never understood why we do it here.
Simon: "...the funeral thing is closed." 🤣🤣 Me, a kid in California. : I wore shoes to school and to church. The rest of the time, barefooted. Same feet, indoors and out.
It always cracks me up when Europeans think its weird that most Americans have air conditioning. You do realize that the Czech Republic is on a slightly more northerly latitude than Ontario Canada, right? And Chicago (a rather northerly city in the US) is on the same latitude as Madrid. Where I am in Kansas is about the same latitude as Damascus. Parts of the US are farther south than the Tropic of Cancer. So yeah, its hotter here.
He even said it's hot there today too. Like it's the end of September in Massachusetts, so decently far north, and I still needed my air conditioner on last night.
@@ThatWriterKevin Yea, here in CT too. East Coast has all the humidity and mugginess. Simon over in CZ is in a land-locked country which doesn't. I lived in Prague for a few years... 85 degrees is fine over there with just a fan. Anything above, just go to a pub and get some cheap beer!
The United States does not find school shootings normal. How ridiculous a statement. It’s because the more they happen the more people expect them, not accept or normalize them. Arnt these ideas you are making fun of just making fun of another culture. Why is it ok to make fun of Americans, but it’s disgusting to make fun of cultural norms from Korea, Ethiopia, Mexico etc. to name just a few random cultures. I don’t find this offensive myself, just sort of hypocritical. Some of your points make sense, others are just you not understanding it because it’s different. That’s a little close minded. Imagine saying, hey China why are you teaching your children China is the greatest country in the world. In that case it’s even more true, but it’s not a joke to call them xenophobic.
I learned recently that in many places the kitchen cupboards are not included when you rent an apartment, so renters have to go buy new cupboards when they move in. I was like 🤯
I think here in the USA the asking about where you're from is more about finding out ethnicity, not nationality, even though we might sometimes describe it in terms of nationality. Xenophobia and bigotry are very rampant here, and immigrants become very proud of their origins once they get here, where the "Americans" criticize them for their national origins. We even have derogatory terms for each other. When I describe my ethnicity, I like to use the derogatory terms, so I describe myself as a "dago coonass mic". I think that's hilarious, but some "italians" I've run across have found that description so offensive, even equivalent to the n-word. One thing I find ironic, and extremely stupid, is my stepbrother, who is kinda a bigot, rags on Hispanics a lot, even though his children are part Cuban--go figure.
@@ThatWriterKevin I'm not aware of how those names are racist... but I know that the city I grew up in was called "Coon _____" and my phone never accepts "coon" as a valid word when swyping or trying to enter on forms online.
I'm German and it is very unusual to have an open casket ceremony. When my Belgian grandpa died when I was ten we went over there for the funeral. A day before the actual funeral service they had a viewing with his body propped up and you were expected to pay your respects. I still sometimes think about how weird that felt. That was almost two decades ago.
