When someone thinks of culture and tradition, the things that come to mind are consistency, predictability, longevity, and expectation of continuance. Christmas decorations were something you bought ONCE and reused year after year. Only the tree changed every year, but it was always the same kind of tree, the same size, and was always in the same corner. But traditions of any kind seem to be an endangered species in the Modern Era, to the point where many are even derided. Thanksgiving is more about football than being thankful. Memorial Day is for barbeque and beer, not visiting the gravesides of the fallen. It’s “Happy Holidays!” not “Merry Christmas!” The home-cooked meal is now in a microwave package. There are young adults who have never boiled an egg or even made toast. And again, many just assume and will even argue that all this is normal and inevitable. Really? All of human history seems to suggest otherwise. What is Creator’s perspective?

Here again are more examples of tradition and the honoring of tradition as a stable representation of things that are desirable and of great value innately, to reward the human spirit, being transformed, little by little, into cultural commodities through introduction of a kind of cheapening, through the trappings changing to a more surface appeal to be enticing, with few demands on the person themselves. So holidays and their symbols for recognition and the paying of respects, and so on, which are originally designed to have deep meaning and to build strong bonds of identification and person‑to‑person and person-to-cultural connections, now breeze by with just attention to the appearance of things. Events, where people come together, are increasingly transformed to have entertainment value more so than a true reward of sharing through giving of the self and engaging one-on-one to grow friendships and deepen the bonds of love. That used to be what coming together was for, the nurturing of the soul with new infusions of affection through sharing and the deepening of bonds that results. Everything is for convenience and, coupled with the promotion of indulgences, like excess eating and drinking, holidays become a kind of hazard to health and well-being as much as a source of deep meaning and renewal.