Quotes About Tradition

fashion wasn't as important to me as to Urmila. There would be time enough to wear my mother's saris. And in any case Ram's eyes were on me all the time, too.

In India, when grandchildren are sick, some grandmothers will sweep the child with a broom or with the branch of a tree. If the child asked the grandmother what she was doing, she will reply that she was "removing bad spirits". It is reported that in many cases, the children would get well.

This is the prevalence of ritual. To remember something that cannot be forgotten.

your culture has become sophisticated, like a computer, or a drug that you take for a headache. You can use it, but you cannot explain how it works. Certainly not to girls who stack up their firewood against the side of the house.

cassava pots

Stories have a unique power, David. The Inuit believe they can capture souls.

Leaning forward, Bergstrom said, "I'm asking you. Come on, give me a folk legend. Anything. You have to have a story hidden away somewhere." David shook his head. "You're not serious, surely?" Bergstrom studied him carefully for a moment. "You forget, I live and work among the Inuit. Stories

Beer and Rugby are more or less synonymous.

Shared history was the coin of the realm.

Still writing tales?" he said. I told him yes and he nodded once, returning his attention to the snake. Very few of the boys I grew up with had finished high school, but they accepted that I was a writer. I was merely doing what other men did—following in my father's footsteps. Sonny was a plumber. The son of a local drunk was the town drunk in two towns. Sons of soldiers joined the army. That I had become a writer was perfectly normal.

It's how we communicated.' 'I like old-fashioned language.' 'With cussing,' he said. 'Fuck, yeah. Cussing makes you live longer. Did you know that? It gets shit out of your system.

For me growing up, Christmas time was always the most fantastic, exciting time of year, and you'd stay up until three in the morning. You'd hear the parents wrapping in the other room but you knew that also, maybe, they were in collusion with Santa Claus.

Santa is our culture's only mythic figure truly believed in by a large percentage of the population. It's a fact that most of the true believers are under eight years old, and that's a pity.

We were all pagans once, before we went to school.

Gift giving is part of the culture no matter where you are and no matter how long you stay.

You're blindly following a tradition that says because women didn't leave behind voluminous records of their thoughts and deeds, then they didn't have any thoughts and deeds - they were just standing on the sidelines while history was made by men. Just because a woman didn't have a vote doesn't mean that she didn't have an informed opinion. It doesn't mean she was incapable of thinking or acting.

The territorial state is such an ancient form of society - here in Europe it dates back thousands of years - that it is now protected by the sanctity of age and the glory of tradition. A strong religious feeling mingles with the respect and the devotion to the fatherland.

Winegrowing lore said rosebushes were planted to serve as early-warning indicators of sickness in the vines. They supposedly were also a leftover tradition from the days when horse-drawn plows worked the vineyards—the thorns encouraged the beasts to make wide turns and thus reduce the potential damage to the stakes and wires that supported the rows.

I love Christmas. I really do love Christmas. I love being with my family and I love snow. I love the music and the lights and all of it.

When the breakfast dishes are cleared, she starts on the large midday meal: chicken pie or pot roast or fish stew; mashed or boiled potatoes; peas or carrots, fresh or canned, depending on the season. What's left over reappears at supper, transformed into a casserole or a stew. Mother

She offers me a bull's-eye sweet, which she's stashed in her apron pocket with a half-dozen half-smoked Afton butts—a mix of flavors I'll never forget. On the front of the yellow cigarette box is a poem by Robert Burns that Gram likes to sing to an old Irish tune: Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes. Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise.

Unwrapping the leftover currant bread at the Grotes' that evening, I tell them about my party. Mr. Grote snorts. "How ridiculous, celebrating a birth date. I don't even know the day I was born, and I sure can't remember any of theirs," he says, swinging his hand toward his kids. "But let's have that cake.

Riddled his body with bullets"—my da talked like that. Mam was always shushing him, but he waved her off. "It's important they know this," he said. "It's their history! We might be over here now, but by God, our people are over there.

Ritual is the way you carry the presence of the sacred. Ritual is the spark that must not go out.