Why do we associate Christmas with snow in the UK when, in many areas, it is quite unusual?
I don’t think people realise how rare it is. There are only 8 recorded white christmases in London since 1900.So why the association is a fair question. There is a very simple answer to this. Charles Dickens.During Charles Dickens’ childhood there was an unusually high number of white Christmas. 6 out of 9 of his childhood christmases were white. One winter it was so cold that the Thames froze over so thickly they were able to hold market on it. Someone even took an elephant out on to the ice. All this later reflected in his writing. Particularly A Christmas Carol.Dicken’s writing was not enough to embed it so strongly in the British mindset though. What happened next was the advent of Christmas cards. And where did the Christmas card industry look for inspiration for their pictures? That’s right. Dickens. A significant number of early Christmas cards (and still today) show Dickensian street scenes.All this is then repeatedly reinforced today by the advertising industry and media.Hence the image of a perfect British Christmas being snow covered ground, carollers in top hats and robins in the trees. It’s all down to Charles Dickens.
Why are the French ungrateful to the US and UK for World War 2?
Oh! You wanna know why the French are ungrateful to the Allies for 1944?Well, it’s called: “American TV propaganda in 2003 when France refused to follow George W. Bush in his war in Iraq.”Let me explain, in 2003, certain American media claimed that French people had surrender without fighting to the Germans in 1940 and then they claimed that French people were ungrateful for 1944.Do you know why they did that?The truth was that they wanted to make the Americans hate the French! And for that, they needed arguments (obviously false). Then the media began to launch a huge anti-French propaganda effort so that the Americans would not take into consideration the decision the French government made regarding the war in Iraq. The solution was to make it clear that France was not a country to be taken seriously anyway and that these “stupid froggies” were not even grateful to the American soldiers who sacrificed their lives in Normandy.This is the origin of this myth about the French, it is therefore a piece of information totally invented by American journalists (especially extreme right) to destroy the image of France.The truth is that the French have never forgotten about the landing in Normandy and they pay tribute every year to Allied soldiers who died to liberate Europe.Another dark truth about the British is that they totally forgot the sacrifice of 40,000 French soldiers who covered the British evacuation of Dunkirk by preventing the Germans from crossing and having access to the beach.Let us see some interesting pictures and images:[German general Waeger grants the honours of war to the French troops after the siege of Lille, where 40,000 Frenchmen with 50 tanks delayed by 4 days 7 german divisions with 800 tanks which were attempting to destroy the Allies in Dunkirk. June 1, 1940.] ⬇️Like Winston Churchill wrote: “The heroic resistance of the French army saved the British army, allowing England to continue the war.”And of course Americans have forgotten the French help during the American war of Independence against the English.
What do Norwegians think of Brits?
I feel a close kinship with British people in many ways. I suppose it might be because of our millenia-long shared history, but it’s always felt to me as if British people have a way of looking at and approaching life that is in many ways quite similar to how Norwegians tend to do it.For example, I think it’s fair to say that neither Brits nor Norwegians are overly prone to striking up random conversations with random strangers without provocation.I think our sense of humor including such things as being more fond of understatement than of loud in-your-face jokes is quite compatible; it’s not an accident that Monty Python (possibly the most British of any Comedy) both clearly love Scandinavia AND are loved BY Scandinavia. (Our Telephøne system works fine, the Møøse responsible for biting your sister has been sacked) (Tangential, but I’m going to see John Cleese live next spring !)We’re fond of queuing up in a orderly fashion and though most of us are opposed to capital punishment we would, I feel, be willing to make an exception for people who skip in line.We might not always be the easiest people to get to know; but we love our friends and will walk by their side through hell if that’s what it takes.Examples like these of similarities are many; I could probably go on all day about it without too much effort.We’re not the same in every way though. It’s easy to find important differences if you try. Perhaps the largest set of systematic differences are those that can perhaps easiest be summarized by the UK having Thatcher while Norway had Gro.In other words the UK is politically and socially substantially more conservative than Scandinavia and Norway are, and that underlying difference results in millions of differences large and small.Despite these differences, we’re still similar in enough ways that we get along very well.On a more personal level, a few of my favorite people in the entire world are British, I love them dearly, but that’s mostly because they’re my friends and only secondarily because they’re British.