Trading with tradition and why it matters

Tradition is a powerful force to tie any group together, because it’s one way that any group, or community, or nation, defines itself: “We are the people who – fill in the gap – unlike all the other people we know.”

Many of these traditions come round on a regular time cycle, such as Christmas,  midsummer, or the shortest day, or attached to a particular life event such as births, deaths, marriages, losing first teeth. So members of the group regularly remember, or refresh their knowledge, or have an opportunity to teach them to new recruits to the group, as otherwise the group will dwindle and die. The thinking behind a tradition may become opaque over time. Jumping over a bonfire for St John in Spain is one example. But there’s usually someone who can offer an explanation if asked. It’s interesting that the original meaning of the action is not particularly important for many observers of a particular tradition; we simply do it this way because we “always” have (so you jump seven times in Valencia and nine times in Galicia).

We learn about traditions in the first place inside our own families, before we are even aware that different ways of doing things are possible. (And it’s funny how long that can last; some people are still having surprises in this area on their wedding days and after.) In a family there are all sorts of traditions, some set in stone (like what we do at birthdays or Christmas, and woe betide you if you try to change them), and some that change automatically as time goes by, like who gets to sit in the front seat of the car: it started out as me, if my husband’s driving, but now the boys have longer legs, it’s whoever is the tallest. Tradition means a way of doing things that everyone accepts without arguing, which can be very helpful. It is not helpful if it entrenches either privilege or subjection.

Traditions can also change because the external facts change. One significant ritual with boy babies used to be the passage from wearing gown-type garments to legging-type garment (I can’t say moving from dresses to trousers because the clothes were different from what we mean today by those words). It often coincided with a serious, sometimes the first, haircut; and it was called “shortening”. It was significant because it reflected the point when quite literally the baby became a boy, with different people (fewer women and more men) involved in looking after him and different expectations of behaviour (no more crying, but rowdier play). Something similar happened at a later stage for girls when they started to wear their hair up instead of loose (but they were still supposed to be quiet). We no longer have these traditions because the circumstances have changed, so you only hear about them in Victorian novels, but they clearly were very important in their day.

I get a little nervous when I hear people defending Church practices purely on the basis that they are traditional, however, because tradition can also be weaponised unpleasantly. It can be used to exclude people, to make them feel unwelcome or ignorant. It draws a line around those who think like us, to keep “us” separate from “them”, because the important thing is to be able to distinguish; but this unfortunately can lead to oppression and nasty sorts of power play. The Church has been wrong enough times over the centuries to make tradition on its own not a convincing argument, especially when it’s being used negatively. I’m still waiting to hear a theological justification for not ordaining women, but the argument that it’s traditional simply lacks any force. Also you cannot claim that the sensus fidelium is a crucial element and then ignore it when the fideles have moved on in their thinking; and there are a lot more female fideles than male in the pews of every church I know. The fact that they are female is much less important than that they are faithful; but both facts are significant.

We have managed to move on from being in favour of antisemitism and slavery; it would be good if we could extend this to misogyny and homophobia. Especially in areas where we have precisely zero comments from Jesus himself, restrictive traditions based on flawed human beings and ancient social systems are not a cogent argument. And justifying by a negative (“Jesus didn’t call any women apostles”) doesn’t work because we do know that there were women in his group all the time, throughout his public life and after. Then the Gospels were written by male mortals long after the event, plus they don’t cover everything, as John points out at the end of his Gospel (John 21.25), and as he says, the world could not contain the books that would be needed to make a complete account. Look at the length of Joyce’s Ulysses, and that’s just one day (and incomplete…).

The Anglican compromise over women in holy orders is messy and unsatisfactory, but it’s difficult to see how to improve it without hurting people. I do wish, though, that there was some recognition of the centuries of pain and deprivation which women were expected to accept without even mentioning it, justified purely by an appeal to “tradition”; and of course as soon as clerical orders meant power, they were going to be hard to share. The power imbalance in the Church is real, and recasting the ministry as one purely of service cannot correct this simply by assertion.

Jesus’ own attitude to tradition is refreshingly practical. The Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath (Mark 2.27), religion doesn’t mean not paying your taxes (Matthew 22.21). God makes true marriages but Moses allowed divorce because people sometimes get it wrong (Matthew 19.8). Mary can sit and listen, just like the apostles around Jesus, if that is her choice, instead of doing the serving (Luke 10.42), and so on. And he’s also aware of the power of creating a tradition : “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22.19), and a shared meal is a very potent basis.

Food traditions are a very common way to tie a group together, because everyone needs to eat, but there’s lots of room for different styles and practices, words, rituals. Our family only has Yorkshire pudding with roast beef, and is surprised to see other people suggesting it with lamb or even chicken. Some people put cream on scones first, others jam; my husband’s family eats marmalade with bread and butter, mine only ever on toast (and I just don’t like marmalade anyway). Traditions can be old, new or instant: one of the fun things in a family is seeing a new tradition appear out of nowhere in an instant, by popular acclaim. You can tell because someone will say, “We always…” and the others agree. Sometimes you never hear of it again, but quite often, it turns into a family tradition. I feel this works precisely like the sensus fidelium: you have to have the acceptance as well as the first event, what John Henry Newman called ‘listening for the echo’. Traditions which don’t make the cut sometimes turn into superstitions, like singing to solitary magpies; they are fun, but they don’t carry significance. (On the other hand, you have to sing the right words, and it has to be out of tune.)

Family traditions can be daft. One of ours is at birthdays, and grew out of my inability ever to get presents wrapped beforehand. So I hand them over individually inside a bag, and while the birthday child takes it out and is looking at whatever it is, the bag is smuggled back to me under the table ready for the next present. The bag goes to and fro as many times as there are presents.  It’s silly, it makes us laugh, but it works; and it was a green way of doing present-wrapping even before people started using brown paper or pillowcases.

We like to celebrate our traditions. We can even sing about them: there are songs about tradition in both The Slipper and the Rose and Fiddler on the Roof. That makes sense; The Slipper and the Rose is a reworking of a fairy story (Cinderella) and Fiddler is modern but similarly classic. Tradition contains our past and helps us to make sense of it into the present and future, just like at the Passover meal where the youngest child present asks what is happening, to provide an introduction to the story which explains not only what is happening but also why.  Tradition can be a reason or a historical justification. It should never be just an excuse.

Kate Keefe composes musical settings for the Mass and writes about the psalms. You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.