Traditions can be positive, like an old family custom or surroundings that make you feel at home—or practices like giving supplies to people who are in need around the holidays.
Traditions can also be neutral—neither helpful nor harmful—like the story of the woman who cooked a Sunday roast each week for her family. Before putting the roast in the pan she would always cut the ends off of the meat. One time, as she was doing this, her daughter asked, “Mom, why do you cut off the edges of the roast before you put it in the pan?” Her answer: “Well, that’s just what you have to do.” But the girl persisted. “Why? Does it make it taste better or cook more evenly?” she asked. “I really don’t know; it’s just what Grandma always did. I do it that way because it’s what she taught me. When we visit her, let’s ask her why.”
So the next time they were at the grandmother’s house they asked her why she always trimmed the ends off the roasts before putting them in the oven. Puzzled, she said, “I don’t do that.” Surprised, the mother insisted, “Yes, you do, and that’s what you taught me to do years ago when you first showed me how to prepare a roast.”
“Oh,” the grandmother replied with a chuckle, “I used to have to do that because back then I had such a small pan—it was the only way I could make a large roast fit into it.”
Funny story, but funnier still how many things we do in our daily lives that are like that. “Well, that’s just what you have to do,” we reassure ourselves.
Traditions can also be negative and yet be passed down just as blindly as any other. Certainly that was the case in “The Lottery,” but it’s often that way in real life as well.
Many of our forebears, for example, used to make demeaning remarks about people of different skin color, or they’d lump together certain ethnic groups under one derogatory banner. They didn’t necessarily intend to be mean; they were simply passing on the stereotypes they had picked up from their friends and relatives. “Oh, it’s best that those folks stick together with their own kind, on their own side of town,” they’d say. “Some of them can be nice enough as people, but you wouldn’t want them living in your neighborhood or attending your house of worship.” And they might add, “Just watch out if you ever have to do business with one of them. You’ve got to watch ’em like a hawk.”
These ugly prejudices get passed on, generation to generation. About the time we think we’re finally free of them, an old label or expression will come up somewhere in a conversation, and we realize that this is one tradition we must continually and tenaciously work to root out.
Another negative tradition some of us had handed down was the habit of smoking several packs of cigarettes a day. Years ago this was considered fashionable, a way to fit in, and the cigarettes didn’t cost much back then either. Why not light up like everyone else? Then, as more and more people got sick, and mounting evidence suggested that these “cancer sticks” really can kill you, smoking proved to be a very hard habit to break. Some of us lost our grandparents prematurely as a result. Unfortunately, many of our parents “inherited” their harmful nicotine habits, and even after the avalanche of incriminating evidence came out about the devastating impact of using tobacco, many from my generation—and the next—still find themselves addicted today.
The same kind of generational hand-me-down habits are seen in a variety of other damaging areas: