Traditions

All throughout world history, mankind has been known to practice traditions. Traditions can be a great thing, because they can help people to remember their heritage. They can remind people where they came from, which will lead people to better know who they are. However, there are many instances in history when tradition has not been so beneficial to mankind. 

For a very long time (about 900 A.D. – 1930 A.D.) in China, upper-class Chinese women used to carry out a practice called “foot-binding.” Basically, when a girl was still young, her toes were folded underneath her feet and bound there, then squeezed into very small shoes. A woman’s feet would stay bound that way for the rest of her life. It was very hard for a woman to put pressure on her feet after they were bound, so a woman with bound feet had a really hard time walking, moving around, and really doing any labor that required standing up or moving. It caused a lot of pain for the woman throughout her life, and often a lot of bleeding from her feet. Chinese peasant women didn’t practice feet binding because they had to work standing on their feet with their families to earn a living. Feet-binding was only practiced in families that were wealthy enough to live off of the income of only men. Over time, this tradition largely became a status symbol. If a woman had bound feet, then people knew that there was wealth attached to her name.

X-Ray comparison of a regular foot and a bound foot

As you can observe, there are a lot of pointless elements to this tradition. Nobody really knows how it was started; some people think that women began doing it because it was attractive to men. One legend goes that there was a ballerina who bound her feet to dance in front of the emperor, and many other women began binding their feet because they wanted to be like the ballerina. How the tradition started isn’t really relevant though; the question we should be asking is: why was it continued? Why would Chinese women continue to bind their feet even though it was very painful and restrictive? It may have been a symbol of status, but couldn’t upper-class women just find a different symbol to represent their wealth? The Chinese women were caught in a loop. They continued with foolish traditions only because the generations before them had. They were stuck in a constant state of blindness.

Today in modern American culture, we practice many traditions, and we have many practices that could be recognized as status symbols. A lot of the traditions we have are related to holidays. For example, we light fireworks off on July 4th, we have a feast on Thanksgiving, we give presents on Christmas, we go to stores on Black Friday, we dress up on Halloween, we give valentines on Valentines Day, etc., etc., there are many, many more. Some of these traditions are important to remembering our culture, but some are just really dumb. Take Black Friday, for example. It’s a celebration of material things. People spend hundreds; even thousands of dollars in just one day, all because things are “on sale” or because everybody else is spending their day shopping. It’s embarrassing that we have to have as much law enforcement as we do at the store on Black Friday because people care more about objects than about other people.

Money. Isn’t that what it’s all about in America? Everything we do is for money. It’s like a game: whoever has the most money and can retire the fastest wins the game of life! We have a wide variety of status symbols in our culture. Having a nicer car, or a college degree, or a bigger house shows other people that you are somehow at a higher level than they are, because you have more money than they do. Obviously, poverty is much worse in other parts of the world. But why can’t everybody just treat each other like brothers and sisters? Why do we have to treat other people like lesser beings just because they’re different or because they have less money than us? In my mind, a reputation of integrity is worth more than every paper dollar in America.

What happened to this?

American culture today, though it still possesses significant elements, is foundationally flawed. Therefore, it must be revolutionized. Our traditions do not make us better people. They do not help us to remember our true heritage. Instead, they tear us down and cause us to forget God. True American heritage is Christianity. You can choose to be offended by that statement, but evidence shows that it’s true. I’m not saying that you have to be Christian to be a true American, but I do believe that you have to stand by and live basic Christian principles which are found in ninety-five percent of non-Christian denominations. That is American culture. The Pilgrims sailed the Atlantic Ocean so that they could worship God in the way they believed was right. Our founding fathers called upon God to deliver them from British bondage. They studied and lived by Christian principles and based the systems of our government upon those principles. That is our heritage and the basis of our true culture.

So the question is: why don’t our traditions help us to remember our heritage? Even the traditions that brought people closer to God when they were started are flawed today. For example, Christmas is supposed to be a time to give gifts and show love to other people, and to celebrate what Christ has given to us. Today, we teach the next generation that how much you receive from others is more important than how much you can give. Thanksgiving started out as a day to give thanks to God and to remember all that he has given us, but today it’s just gluttony and NFL worship.

Let us cease to practice foolish traditions of our fathers and instead do things that will help us to remember who we really are and where we came from. That is what traditions should do.