Copyright © 2001 NLThomas
All Rights Reserved

Tradition: Today it is something modern and new, an innovation or a creation; Next year it is old hat, common and ordinary, or passe and obsolete; Ten years later, it is a curiosity, a lingering fading memory of youth and what momma and poppa use to do but you don't care because you are too busy living life and raising your own kids; Thirty years down the road, it may be a brief foot note in history, a faded letter falling out of an old book or gramma's faltering memory of something important she did as a girl but can't remember the details.

Fifty years from now, tradition is a nostalgic longing for the good old days when life was real and times were slower; A hundred years hence, it is historically important but no body is still alive who can tell you how or why.

Then, to recreate the importance of the event or action, people make up suppositions, interject what-if's, and try to piece together tiny bits and pieces of facts. Like a jig-saw puzzle with most of the pieces missing, or the interlocking bumps badly worn, tradition then becomes a modern myth. Inaccurate and misinterpreted in light of a new time and a different world by people who are them selves creating new traditions.

And the process starts all over again. Ironic isn't it? What we actually do now is the only real tradition we will ever know.