Tradition!

As we sat around the table at Thanksgiving, eating the same food we eat every year (not that I’m complaining!), on the same pilgrim placemats my 10-year old nephew made years ago in preschool, at the same strange time (who eats dinner at 4:00?), with the same wonderful people, I started thinking about the power of tradition. As someone who observes just about every major and minor Jewish holiday with all the requisite flourishes, believe me – I know about tradition.

What is it about tradition that is so important to people? Why do we all have to eat turkey at the same time — millions of turkeys across the country — on this one day? (Though my first year in Boston for grad school, I had Thanksgiving with my elderly landlady who could not stand turkey so we had cornish hens — it just felt wrong!)

I think tradition is especially important to us because when so many things constantly change in our lives, the things that remain the same keep us linked to the past, to our roots, to our family. It’s comforting to experience the same tastes, smells, sounds and sights that are connected to positive emotions and feelings of happiness, belonging and love (though sadly this is not true for everyone). Children especially cling to traditions and get upset when they are not followed (what do you mean you didn’t put marshmallows on top of the sweet potatoes this year????).

While we generally think of traditions as something that is passed down through the generations, they can also be started anew just by doing the same thing for two years in a row. About 5 years ago, I volunteered to bring a different version of the standard cranberry sauce (a jalapeno-spiked relish – delicious!) that is now a dish I bring every year. Or on a non-holiday note, my husband and I got together a few years ago with some good friends we don’t see very often on what happened to be the winter solstice. Since then, we make it a point to at see each other at least twice a year — on the winter and summer solstices. The tradition ensures that we will maintain our friendship.

Not all traditions come from history, religion or family. Some are manufactured by those with a financial or social interest in the tradition’s accoutrements and are adopted widely by a community or culture. Recently I read in the Wall Street Journal (subscriber access only) about Pepero Day, an unofficial holiday in South Korea in which friends and couples exchange the chocolate-coated Pepero cookie sticks (four of which look like the holiday’s date — 11/11). Sales of the snack have skyrocketed since Pepero Day supposedly started in 1994, when girls at a middle school exchanged Pepero sticks, wishing each other to become as tall and slender as a Pepero (though it may be a story dreamed up by the marketing team).

Similarly, Kit Kat bars have become popular in Japan as a way of wishing someone luck on their school exams. This tradition was orchestrated by the marketers in a way that made it seem organic and is based on the similarity between the candy’s name and the Japanese phrase kitto katsu, which means roughly “I hope you succeed!” Now Japanese moms wouldn’t think of sending their children to take their exams without their lucky Kit Kats.

Is this any different from the Hallmark holidays of Grandparent’s Day and Secretary’s Day or the obvious commercial tradition of having yearly blowout sales on the day after Thanksgiving (my own private vision of hell is going to the mall that day)? In fact, social marketers do this type of thing all the time, with this Friday being World AIDS Day, next week being National Handwashing Awareness Week and dozens of other national health observances for all days, weeks and months. These observances might be traditions for people working in these fields, but they haven’t quite caught on with the general public yet.

How can we create new positive health and social traditions that will be adopted by the people who will most benefit from them?

• Tie it to a seasonal occurrence – For example, fire prevention programs promote the semi-annual campaign to encourage people to change the battery in their smoke detectors when they change the clocks for daylight savings time.
• Make it about friends and family – Every October, my stepfamily participates in the Hirshberg Foundation’s Walk/Run to raise money for pancreatic cancer research because their father died from the disease. It’s a way for them to come together and do something positive in their father’s memory.
• Incorporate the new tradition into already-existing traditions – Perhaps that pumpkin pie can be made in a way that is lower in fat and calories or the family can go on a post-Thanksgiving dinner walk around the neighborhood. One of the best examples of a social marketing program done on a small budget I’ve seen is a campaign by the state of Georgia to prevent outbreaks of bacterial infection by a couple of small changes to the way mostly older African American women prepare the traditional dish of chitterlings (pork intestines).
• Incorporate other cultures’ traditions into your own – We have a culture that thinks nothing of eating nachos on Cinco de Mayo and drinking green beer on St. Patrick’s Day. Perhaps there are other more healthful or socially beneficial traditions from other diverse groups that can be extended to the larger culture. For example, the Mediterranean diet, which centers around olive oil, unrefined grains, fruits and vegetables, and a moderate amount of wine, has been shown to increase longevity and could be touted as part of a Greek festival day. The Chinese New Year could be an occasion for promoting the healthful effects of drinking tea.
• Institutionalize something as a tradition by doing it annually – Once something has been done two years in a row, it could loosely be considered a tradition. Take advantage of that fact and start referring to your annual event as a community tradition. Boston Medical Center’s Halloween Town seems like it could be heading in this direction after just two years. Your community’s annual health fair might be the occasion that people look forward to each year to get their blood pressure checked and talk to a health educator about their latest health concern.

Traditions can be big or small. Starbucks is making a little too much of the fact that it rolls out red cups for the holiday by creating an entire website called It’s Red Again that is all about holiday traditions. But they are definitely smart to try to tie their product to something that resonates deeply with people — tradition.

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