Quotes About Tradition

There has been only one Christmas - the rest are anniversaries.

For centuries men have kept an appointment with Christmas. Christmas means fellowship, feasting, giving and receiving, a time of good cheer, home.

The word sahib, which Sikhs use when they speak of the scripture, may become contentious in future. It was used respectfully in addressing, in particular, white men in the days of the Raj. The wife was known as the mem sahib, which indicated that her status derived from her husband. Sahib is used to acknowledge the status of the scripture in the same way, but some women writers may dispense with it, claiming that it reinforces the strong but unwarranted male dominance in the Sikh Panth.

Men have always danced bhangra, and women the female Punjabi equivalent, gidda, but not in the same place. Now, at sophisticated wedding receptions, there may be mixed discos with elderly bemused relatives watching and thinking how things have changed since their young days. Not, of course for the better!

Children should not offer their opinions in the presence of their elders or contradict them.

Nowadays marriages across the lines of varna and zat are permissible but traditions that are probably 2,000 years old are not quickly rejected. (Caste discrimination in India is now illegal but it still exists, as does illegal discrimination of various kinds in Britain and elsewhere.)

In Punjabi culture a girl is paraya dhan – the property of others is the literal meaning of the phrase. Her father, then her husband, is responsible for her. She is never her own person. She is a costly expense to her parents, as a dowry is expected, and after they have spent everything on her the benefit is enjoyed by the family she marries into.

If you want to eat well in England, eat three breakfasts.

Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it's a mistake to make a habit out of it.

You know that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.

tradition gives the one thing many shapes.

Perhaps the Gaelic people shall by his like bring back again the ancient simplicity and amplitude of imagination.

Seanchan (pronounced Shanahan), Chief Poet of Ireland.

I don't have to tell you that the one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has been erased like a blackboard, only to be rebuilt and then erased again. But baseball has marked time while America has rolled by like a procession of steamrollers.

Baseball is a ceremony, a ritual, as surely as sacrificing a goat beneath a full moon is a ritual.

What happened to the good old days of "Woman as passive recipient?" What happened to being courted? What happened to sitting back under a parasol and granting someone a chance to try to win us over?

It is the highest form of culture and craftmanship in art to use local materials. That way you stand a chance of adding to culture. The other way you are in danger of merely imitating it.

For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know.

The mistletoe hung in the castle hall, The holly branch shone on the old oak wall.

A lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.

I detest 'Jingle Bells,' 'White Christmas,' 'Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer,' and the obscene spending bonanza that nowadays seems to occupy not just December, but November and much of October, too.

Christmas is a necessity. There has to be at least one day of the year to remind us that we're here for something else besides ourselves.

Christmas is a good excuse to eat everything.