Are Traditions Important?
Traditions form a collective identity. They touch us, connect us, expand us. As much as I hated being paraded down the street in a silly hat, gown, and white bow tie, for once, I felt included.
This week, I have been busy with other projects, so I haven’t been able to dedicate as much time to Substack. However, I am determined to keep my goal of regular posting this year, even if I have been a day late both times. I’m so sorry. Here is a little note I’ve been working on about the importance of traditions. I hope you enjoy it.
The word tradition literally means the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation. 2025 will be the 23rdyear of Care Leavers Week, and it has reached the point where it has crossed generations and become a tradition. Every year during the October holidays, we ask the country to pay attention to those who grew up in the state's care. To celebrate their achievements. To amplify their voices. To raise awareness of their challenges. But this is not one we should be proud of and not one I will pass down to my children. This got me thinking: are traditions important?
I’m fortunate enough to go to the university with the most famous whacky, arcane traditions, from setting clocks five-minutes wrong to swearing not to light a fire in the Bodleian library: the University of Oxford. Each October, sees one of the most public of Oxford rituals: matriculation. The ceremony that confers a student’s place here. An induction into the family. Acceptance into this world. A new word which I still don’t know how to say.
Traditions scare me. That’s because I’ve never really experienced them in the way most people have. In the care system, we don’t have any family traditions, let alone any school ones. I didn’t receive a birthday cake until I was seventeen, and I won’t horrify you with Christmas. So, when the university emailed me, demanding my participation, every rebel bone in my body was triggered.
My initial reaction was to run away. To convince myself that this was some outdated, posh rhubarb that didn’t need me. The truth was, I was scared. To take part in a tradition, you must feel part of something. That’s a feeling I’m not used to. Care leavers are used to being ignored, overlooked, and demeaned. Excluded. By definition, we’re not usually seen as ‘part of the family’. We’re used to institutions baking pie-crust promises, easily made, easily broken. Scars that are hard to fade.
Some say the Oxford traditions go against everything we have learned about being progressive, productive, creative, and innovative, and are just not inclusive. That they form barriers for people from my background. But is that really the case?
Traditions form a collective identity. They touch us, connect us, expand us. As much as I hated being paraded down the street in a silly hat, gown, and white bow tie, for once, I felt included.
The Sheldonian Theatre, filled with black-and-white TV static, created a unique moment. For that moment, all the differences in background, area of study, interests, or personalities no longer mattered. At that moment, as the static froze and the Latin was spoken, we were all the same. Officially becoming students at the University of Oxford unified us all. From that moment, finally, I felt part of something.
Are traditions important? In my world, the only tradition is that they chuck you out at eighteen, regardless of your situation, making your life as unstable as a Mentos mint in a Coke bottle. This is something that needs to stop. But as Oxford opens up to more people from diverse and low-income backgrounds, traditions will be touchstones that make us feel part of the university. It is an extreme sense of privilege not to see how these silly, inconsequential customs give the rest of us the permission to be part of it. If anything, it’s an attempt to exclude us from their world. Ultimately, if I had to be paraded in public in a silly hat and a white dicky tie, so should everyone else after me.
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Hi Matt.
Unsure of myself and everything, in social situations I’d adopt accents and mannerisms to fit in. So tiring, and I felt phony. I didn’t know back then that I was ‘masking’ but when I came to understand (late diagnosis) ASD I looked back and thought about, still do, starlings mimicking to better survive in this or that territory. This piece you've written asking if traditions are important, reminded me of all of that. I’m hoping to engage more instead of just enjoying the pieces I read here on Substack and leaving a like, but hope it’s okay - I think it is - to discuss what resonates with my own experience/s.
What I read into this is that you see these customs not as mere pageantry but as adaptation mechanisms. The image you create of being "paraded in public in a silly hat and white dicky tie" becomes something more than costume, it transforms into a kind of protective mimicry, a way of claiming space in an ecosystem that wasn't originally designed for you. That metaphor of Mentos in a Coke bottle captures the instability of being young and unsupported, an explosive, uncontainable energy of precarity.
And you understand that rejecting these traditions - however archaic and silly they might seem - can sometimes be a luxury afforded only to those who already feel secure in their belonging. Traditions serving as "touchstones" reveal a profound truth about belonging, how we seek anchor points in unfamiliar territories. (You’re a navigator using stars to find your way through unknown waters!)
While not in the care system, my husband M and I are from backgrounds that weren’t always easy, and in these more 'middle class' (if you like) days of ours, and at our age, we find ourselves examining our privilege (is it really okay to take a pizza oven to the campsite) but I think we’re more comfortable with our privilege: it's a kind of emotional erosion in many ways, a slow wearing away of defensive layers that sometimes shield us from uncomfortable truths. There's something deeply honest about reaching this place of acceptance, reading this ace piece you’ve written I reckon you’ve arrived at that place sooner than we did. Nice one.
Thanks for a beautiful, interesting piece.
Completely relate about the traditions, it’s super hard to understand and can feel like a secret language. Gorgeous writing!