More Than Just Because 4/24/2022

By: Jennifer Richardson Holt

The story is told of a woman who is roasting a piece of meat.  I do not recollect what type of meat exactly, whether ham or beef and luckily that bears no significance to the story. She had watched her mother prepare this roast for ages and had watched her grandmother before her.  They had always cut the end off the meat and discarded it before putting it in the pan to roast.  One day this woman became curious as to what the benefit of this procedure was. She proceeded to ask her mother why she had always cut off one end of the meat and she had no response other than that was how her mother had always done it. So in an attempt to get to the heart of this culinary matter, she travels to her grandmother, now aging and no longer able to cook for herself.  She questions her grandmother about the inexplicable practice when roasting meat.  The grandmother chuckles when questioned. “The only reason that I cut the end off the roast was because my pan was too short!” Thus, the mystery was solved and poor edible beasts over the years had died to be slightly less useful than they could have been.

I told that tale to make a point however I feel before I say any more upon said point, I need to make a disclaimer. I love traditions.  I mean really, genuinely, love traditions.  Here in the South, we may possibly love them more than your average person.  I daresay we may be a tad excessive about such things.  But I do love some special something that has been passed down through generations and really the longer through time the better.  Now that I am hopeful that you do in fact believe me as to how much I value traditions I want to look at the lesson learned from my little story.  This was a tradition that was strictly adhered to, but it was empty.  No effort was made to know why it was done or what meaning it held.  It was simply done because that is the way it had always been done.  When long-held ideas are given their worth based solely on how long they’ve been held, a very slippery slope forms.  One can slide easily into going through the motions and what could be a ritual with depth and significance becomes a hollow shell of its former and potential self.

Now, perhaps you’re wondering where in blue tarnation I came up with such a topic.  I have to give credit for these ideas to a friend of mine. She was born and raised in the south but no longer lives here.  She sent me a message discussing the differences of what last Sunday’s holiday looked like on the social media feeds of her southern friends versus her non southern friends.  She talked about how her friends below the Mason-Dixon were all fancy dresses, church trips and posed family portraits.  And while her other friends did happily acknowledge the holiday, the clamor for the classic pastel/floral Easter presentation wasn’t there.  She told me of how it seemed to her that while none of the display she witnessed was negative, it did seem contrived somewhat.  I absolutely must use her words because they were so beautiful. She said, “[…] I feel sadness.  I feel like the Southern roots I left behind have sprouted into kudzu, clamoring to prove its strength but becoming a solid mass of sameness.  Each trying to be the vine that gets to climb the power pole for all to see.”

I had never thought about it from this angle but perhaps it is because I have never really left the south for any significant amount of time.  But when she made this point, it is like my eyes were opened to an entirely new perspective.  Are some of these traditions that we still cling to things we do just because it is what we have always done? I don’t suppose this is limited in its application to only the south either. If we have some long-standing ritual, once rooted in something of intrinsic value be it in our faith, our heritage or any basis of substance we need to carry it on for the importance of its foundation. We shouldn’t keep a convention alive because it’s just always been done.  But probably even more so we shouldn’t carry it on in hopes that we’ll get a pat on the back from our peers for just doing what we’re supposed to do because it’s just what everyone does.  I certainly hope that all the frilled families I saw on my social media last weekend really held on to the meaning of the moment and weren’t just posed with vacant smiles dressed in lovely clothes.

I still love tradition.  I will still do a lot of the things that I have always done for certain occasions. But when I wear a certain outfit, serve a certain dish or any other associated activity I am going to try to remember to pause. I want to step outside of my own little life that I present to the world and see why I am doing the things I am doing.  I don’t want to put out the aged family nativity set at Christmas and not do it for all the right reasons. I don’t want to dress my best and sing songs of Hope and Joy on Easter Sunday just for the photo opportunity that it presents.  I want the traditions I love to have meaning. I want them to make memories that are significant enough that the meaning will be engrained so deeply within them that their value moves through the years with them.  I don’t want any treasured ritual to be a “just because” moment.  May the beloved practice that I pass down be powerful and purposeful and if that means I need a smaller roast or a bigger pan, let nothing go to waste.