How do you celebrate ?

Curious about this one - we've just had one of the best Six Nations Rugby matches I've seen for some time and happily England ran out the winners. France were playing passionately and near their mercurial best but England were able to soak up all the pressure and counterpunched when they could.

The scoring of the England try right at the end drew out a fist raising "YES!" out of me. I reckon the way we celebrate either winning or losing can tell a lot about it. It certainly tells things about our passion for the activity we've been pinning our hopes on. I've gone for the fistraising one fairly often in my sport. There's just something to seeing the stumps and bails going flying when you've snuck a ball past a batsman's defences.

When I'm watching rugby and a team is about to score a try, it's often a more first (definitely not the middle one!) finger pointed in the air in a more dignified kinda mini-fist. I reckon if the event being celebrated is more sudden like a wicket in cricket, a goal in football or the opening of an exam results envelope, the cheering will be that much more intense.

I've gone for the Shirt-Over-Head & Aeroplanes one a few times but I try not to do that any more as it's usually followed by cries of "Put it away!" (My figure is not what you'd call svelte). I don't think I've ever done the Snoopy Dance, although I can understand more Twinkle-Toed people going for that one.

The most important thing is the dignity aspect. A celebration is only a good one if it has respect for the loser in the house. That would be the people who you just realise have failed that exam, or the batsman who just got sent back to the pavilion. Bad losers aren't good people to know but Bad Winners are a lot, lot worse. I'd like to think I've never intentionally rubbed in a triumph and once or twice I've given an "Unlucky mate" to someone who's gotten out to me who really didn't deserve it.

So what's your favourite celebration ? Is it the quiet demonstration, the Primal Scream, the Snoopy Dance or do you try to embarass yourself as much as you can ? This isn't just for the sporty, success in anything should be celebrated, including exams, relationships, achievements for other people, promotions, anything.

PS There's an audio clip somewhere which has Guildlink's first downing of Ragnaros, which marked that organisation "Arriving" on the Big-Guild stage. When he went down, there was a good bit of shouting YES! from various people, followed by what can only be described as gurgling giggling. Well - I had an open mic and nothing better popped into my head. What makes it really embarassing is that the next comment was an "Oooo-kay" from Sarai, the raid leader. Think she may have been alt-tabbing to Teamspeak to see who needed the huggy jacket.