Tradition? Bah, humbug!

A decision made at the Lions' meeting on Wednesday has led me to muse on tradition. I happen to live in a country which is reputed to be steeped in tradition, and yes, we English do seem to have a lot of traditions. Many of these are associated with the Royal Family, which is perhaps not very surprising as our monarchy is possibly itself one of our older traditions. There are those who would dispense with the trappings of our constitutional monarchy, claiming that it is too expensive and it outmoded. On the other hand, the monarch does provide a sort of non-political rallying point that a president cannot given that he or she is a politician.

In just a few weeks' time one of those ancient traditions connected with the monarchy will take place. On Maundy Thursday, the monarch hands out Maundy money. This is a tradition which dates back very nearly 350 years to the reign of King Charles II and involves poor people being given money. (Perhaps we will return to this subject as there is quite a lot of detail involved.) Still with the monarchy, we have the tradition of the sovereign enjoying two birthdays each year - the real one and the official one. The official birthday is marked by a ceremony called Trooping the Colour when one of the regiments of the Household Division parades its colour in front of the troops and the sovereign. This was originally intended as a means of showing the soldiers which was their regiment's colour so that in the confusion of battle they would be able to recognise where their commanding officer was.

Many traditions do seem to have started their lives as some form of useful activity but have, with the passage of time, lost their original purpose or that purpose has become redundant or unnecessary. But there are other forms of tradition which have apparently never served a useful purpose. These really are merely customs - or even habits. Clubs and societies often claim to have their traditions, but how they came about has long since been forgotten. The same can be said for why they came about. I'm thinking here of things like initiation ceremonies or, as a hypothetical example, the dramatic society taking a swim in the sea on the third Sunday in September every year. What purpose would that serve?

But perhaps that would serve a purpose. As well as being a creature of habit and routine, man is basically a pack animal. We want to belong to a group of some sort, be it a gang, a society or just a group of friends. A lot of the traditions which grow up around such groups serve a purpose which is not immediately obvious: they help bind the group together.

Traditions, though, can become habits. If a member of our hypothetical dramatic society proposed altering the day of the annual swim, there would almost certainly be an objection from somebody that 'we have always swum on the third Sunday in September'. So what? Does it really matter if for once the swim takes place on a different Sunday which just happens to be more convenient for the majority?

That is, basically, what has happened in our Lions Club. For all but sixty years, the club has met on the first and third Wednesday each month, the meeting on the first Wednesday having evolved into a social dinner meeting with the second meeting being reserved for dealing with business. It was suggested that, as several members had other commitments on the first Wednesday, the dinner meetings should be held on the first Thursday. The cry came: 'but we've always...' All the same, our dinner meetings will move to the first Thursday, starting in July with the new Lions' year.