Monday, November 19, 2018

More Ways of Giving Thanks


Break With Tradition

'I love tradition,' Dalinar said to Kadash. 'I've fought for tradition...But merely being tradition does not make something worthy, Kadash. We can't just assume that because something is old it is right.'”
Brandon Sanderson (Oathbringer)

I must preface this post by saying, I am not a traditional person. Don't ask me why, because I came from a very ordinary place and people, and my family's customs were well within the camp of traditional. But, it just doesn't matter to me if we do things as they've always been done. As my grandmother told me, “You just ain't right, child.”

Yesterday, as part of his sermon, our pastor told a story about a little child and her mother. The child is watching her mother preparing a ham for baking. She first cuts off the hock end of the ham. Seeing this, the child asks, “Why did you cut off that end of the ham?” Her mother looks perplexed, and tells her, “I don't know. It is just the way my mother did it, so that's how I learned to bake a ham.” But the child persists (as they so often do), so they go to the phone and call the child's grandmother. “Grandmother, why do you cut off the end the ham before you cook it?” Her grandmother responds the same as the child's mother. “Because that's how I learned to do it from my mother.” Since the great-grandmother is still living, the child then calls her and asks the same question, why cut the end off the ham? The great-grandmother seems surprised by the question, and responds, “Because I didn't have a pan large enough to cook it otherwise!”

Mark Twain wrote in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, “The less there is to justify a tradition, the harder it is to get rid of it.” And he was right. There is something about the holidays that puts us into robot-mode. We crank out those turkey's and hams—baked, fried, roasted, grilled—and serve them up with cornbread dressing and cranberry sauce. Year after year, decade after decade. There is security in that I suppose, but as Jiddu Krishnamurti said, “Tradition becomes our security, but when the mind is secure it is in decay.” It's okay to ditch the big bird and stuff some portabella mushrooms instead. Sausage, Italian breadcrumbs and freshly grated Parmesan cheese make a very good stuffing, and mushrooms go well with some lightly steamed asparagus.

W. Somerset Maugham wrote, “Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.” Cook up some new traditions this Thanksgiving. Be wild. Be free. And, please, don't cut the hock off your ham!

                                                    In the Spirit,
                                                        Jane

No comments: