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The problem is that rites of passage are by definition social occasions, involving a sustained period of obligatory interaction with other humans - and, worse, many are social occasions at which 'private' family matters (pair-bonding, bereavement, transition to adulthood) become 'public'. On top of all that, one is expected to express a bit of emotion. Not much, admittedly: the English do not go in for extravagant weeping and wailing at funerals, frenzied joy at weddings, or excessively gooey sentimentality at christenings; but even the minimal, token display of feeling that is customary at English rites of passage can be an ordeal for many of us. (Most of us cannot even stomach 'the peace' - a ritual introduced into ordinary church services by well-meaning vicars, which requires us to shake hands with the person next to us and mumble, 'Peace be with you'. 'Everyone I've ever met hates "the peace",' said one informant. 'It sends shivers up my spine just thinking about it.')

Life-cycle transitional rites can be tense affairs in other countries as well, of course. The events marked by rites of passage often involve major transformations, which may be a source of considerable anxiety and fear. Even events regarded as positive transitions, occasions for celebration - such as christenings, coming-of-age or graduation ceremonies, engagement-parties and weddings - can be highly stressful. The passage from one social state to another is a difficult business, and it is no accident that such events, in most cultures, almost invariably involve the consumption of significant quantities of alcohol.

But the English do seem to find these transitional rites particularly challenging, and I think that our uneasiness reflects a curious ambivalence in our attitude towards ritual. We have an intense need for the rules and formalities of ritual, but at the same time we find these ceremonies acutely embarrassing and uncomfortable. As with dress, we are at our best when we are 'in uniform' - at those grand-scale royal and state rituals when every step is choreographed and every word scripted, leaving no room for uncertainty or inept social improvisation. The participants may not enjoy these occasions, but at least they know what to do and say. I pointed out in the Dress Codes chapter that although the English do not like formality, and resent being dictated to by prim little rules and stuffy regulations, we lack the natural grace and social ease to cope with informality.

The rituals involved in private weddings, funerals and other 'passages' are just formal enough to make us feel stiff and resentful, but also informal enough to expose our social dis-ease. The formal pieties and platitudes are too affectedly earnest, too contrived and, in many cases, too embarrassingly religious, making us squirm and tug at our collars and shuffle our feet. But the informal bits where we are left to our own devices are even more awkward. Our difficulties at weddings and other transformational rites are essentially the same as those of a 'normal' English social encounter - those painfully inept introductions and greetings where nobody knows quite what to say or what they should do with their hands - only here our problems are magnified by the importance of the occasion. We feel we should try to say something suitably profound to a bride, proud parent, widow or graduate, without sounding pompous or sentimental, or resorting to worn-out cliches, and that we should arrange our features into a suitably pleased or downcast expression, again without overdoing either joy or grief. And we still don't know what to do with our hands, or whether or not to hug or kiss, resulting in the usual clumsy, tentative handshakes, stiffly self-conscious embraces and awkward bumping of cheeks (or, at weddings and christenings, bumping of hat-brims).

Hatching Rules and Initiation Rites

Only around a quarter of the English have their babies christened. This perhaps tells us more about English indifference to religion than about our attitude to children, but half of us do get married in church, and most of us end up having a Christian funeral of some sort, so the relative unpopularity of christenings may reflect a certain cultural apathy towards children as well. It is not as though those who do not go in for christenings compensate with some other kind of momentous celebration to welcome the new arrival. The birth of a child is a positive event, certainly, but the English do not make nearly as much of a big social fuss about it as most other cultures. The proud new father may buy a few rounds of drinks for his mates in the pub (a custom curiously known as 'wetting the baby's head', although the baby is not present, which is probably just as well), but then the English will happily seize upon almost any excuse for a celebratory drink or six. The child is not even the subject of conversation for very long: once the father has been subjected to a bit of good-natured ribbing, and a brief moaning ritual about the curtailment of freedom, sleepless nights, loss of libido and general noise and mess associated with babies, the topic is regarded as pretty much exhausted, and the head-wetters resume their normal pub-talk.

The grandparents, other close relatives and the mother's female friends may take more of a genuine interest in the infant, but this is largely a matter of informal private visits rather than any big social rites of passage. The American custom of a 'baby shower' for the new mother is sometimes adopted, but has not really caught on here to the same degree, and in any case usually takes place before the birth, with no actual baby involved. Christenings tend to be relatively small and quiet affairs; and even at christenings, the baby is only the focus of attention for a very brief period - the English as a rule do not go in for too much excited goo-ing and coo-ing over infants. In some cases (enough for Debrett's to comment and frown upon the practice) christenings are merely an excuse for social-climbing parents to secure 'posh', rich or influential godparents for their child - known as 'trophy godparents'.

Please don't misunderstand me. I am not suggesting that individual English parents do not love and cherish their children. They clearly do, and they have the same natural parental instincts as any other humans. It is just that as a culture we do not seem to value children as highly as other cultures do. We love them as individuals, but we do not ritually welcome them into the social world with the same degree of enthusiasm. It is often said that the English care more about their animals than their children. This is an unfair exaggeration, but the fact that our National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was not founded until some sixty years after the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals gives some indication of the cultural order of priorities.

Kid-talk and the One-downmanship Rules

English parents are as proud of their children as parents in any other culture, but you would never know this from the way they talk about them. The modesty rules not only forbid boasting about one's offspring, but specifically prescribe mock-denigration of them. Even the proudest and most doting of English parents must roll their eyes, sigh heavily, and moan to each other about how noisy, tiresome, lazy, hopeless and impossible their children are. At a party, I heard one mother try to pay another a compliment: 'I hear your Peter's doing 10 GCSEs - he must be terribly clever...' This was deflected with a snorting laugh and a disparaging complaint: 'Well, he'll have to be, as he certainly never seems to do any work - just plays those mindless computer games and listens to that godawful music...' To which the first mother replied, 'Oh, don't tell me - Sam's bound to fail all his: the only thing he's any good at is skateboarding, and they don't have A-levels in that, as I keep telling him, not that he takes a blind bit of notice of anything I say, of course...' The children in question might have been academic paragons, and both mothers perfectly aware of this - indeed, the lack of any real anxiety in their tones suggested that they were confidently expecting good results - but it would have been bad manners to say so.