by Keith Bassham
A couple of months ago I introduced the young adults in my Sunday school class to Fiddler on the Roof. Tevye, the impoverished Russian Jew with a house full of daughters, was right there in my living room, singing and telling my 20-somethings and me the value of tradition. “Because of our traditions,” Tevye sings, “we’ve kept our balance for many, many years … and because of our traditions, every one of us knows who he is and what God expects him to do.”
Those who know the storyline must agree Tevye is full of contradictions, but he really believes in the traditions and their importance, especially when we live in uncertain and unknowable times.
“Without our traditions,” he says, “our lives would be as shaky as … a fiddler on the roof.”
Even though I had no particularly spiritual heritage growing up, I did experience tradition, especially in the fall of the year. There were family rituals for going back to school — new clothes and shoes, school supplies, and such. Halloween was a big deal, but Thanksgiving was even bigger. There were special things on the table we saw only at Thanksgiving, and everyone had their favorite part of the turkey, or the fresh roll in the corner of the pan, and mom’s one-of-a-kind stuffing. Mainly, though, it was a family get-together, as it is for some many others. Sometimes, the holiday really did include a trip to grandma’s house, just like the song, and even those six-hour road trips had their own sub-traditions — stops along the way, seating arrangements in the car, and games we played on the road.
Having those Thanksgiving traditions made it easy to spot something that “wasn’t quite right.” Even as kids, we knew when a trip landmark had changed, or when Mom missed an ingredient in the stuffing; things an outsider may not notice, but even the youngsters knew. Something was wrong, and life, for a time, was shaky.
Tradition has fallen on hard times. Partially because traditions are easy to ridicule and reject if we don’t know their origins; partially because we emphasize their defects over their benefits. I know traditions can morph into mindless rules, I also tend to agree with Tevye when he said that because of his family’s traditions, “every one of us knows who he is and what God expects him to do.”
Sometimes traditions are characterized as ruts in a road, and ruts are described by one preacher of my acquaintance as a “coffin with both ends kicked out.” I prefer to think of them as marks left by an earlier generation who would have gladly preferred to make a journey on a marked road, but without that choice, pioneered a wilderness. And having been the first, they left ruts in the road that said, “We’ve been here, and we made it. Now, you can benefit from our experience.”
Be thankful for everything this Thanksgiving, and enjoy your own traditions, both new and old.