Tradition Bound

We were gathered around the table for our New Year's Day meal. This year our dinner was a little more casual: not a sit-down affair but buffet-style and everyone loading their plates and heading into the log room to sit around and eat and talk by the fire.

A visitor remarked on how tasty the cabbage was. Boiled cabbage is a New Year's staple here, served with wrapped-up coins hidden in the leaves and broth. Plenty of butter makes it great! I was thinking of that with a smile this morning, because how often do we assume we don't like something, only to find it prepared a certain way and the taste is delicious?

But it struck me then how easily my family accepts the old traditions, not only those of the holidays but pretty much year round. They know about putting money in the cabbage, saying "rabbit, rabbit, rabbit" on the first of each month, tossing spilled salt over their left shoulder, hanging bottles in trees, what a dropped fork, knife or spoon means, and other folkloric/traditional activities. We take it for granted and teach it to our children, grandchildren and friends. I wondered, has become a rarity today? Are families still doing the old, traditional rituals, good-luck-charms, bad-luck-deflectors? Will my family continue to do them? How many did I miss, forget, or let go over my lifetime?

Mom and Dad

My English mother and my father, who was raised in New Orleans, passed on many of the ways they grew up with. Mom especially was full of them, and her superstitions and traditions were ingrained in us children at an early age. Most of my siblings still remember and most of them still incorporate these into their lives, at least in some way. When I moved to the mountains I discovered a whole new world of tradition and folklore, which I took to like a duck to water.

These Appalachian hills have preserved many of the old ways, although even in the 40 years I have lived here I have seen this culture slowly dissolving into the mainstream of American life as media of all kinds makes its insidious way into even the most remote mountain holler. It makes me sad and yet, times change, and we change with them. I just hope we don't, as Mom used to say, throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I hope that my family at least will continue to burn their troubles in the fire at New Year's, make apple butter and put pennies in the kettle while it cooks, and hang blue bottles in trees. I hope we will stay in touch with this very old, playful part of life's rituals that deepen the meaning and appreciation, the awareness, of what we are doing, and how our activities link us to past generations. I hope we will continue to start our annual Christmas fire with the yule log saved from the last fire on Old Christmas and stare into those flames with the same eyes as those ancestors of old.


Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.