Tradition or fashion?

Dear friends,

What is tradition after all? All of us seem to know. How do we relate to it? To keep it, to stay attuned – is that a virtue? To change it, “accustom” it – speaks that for a modern mind?
Our land lady in Colombo, Sri Lanka got married – very well within the tradition – at the age of 15. She became a mother at the age of 16. Cora asked her, if she was not afraid. She said “no, because my mother took charge of everything”. What is “everything”?

Tradition is the strongest tool against fashion. Is that so? Fashion is the great and powerful divider of all ages. It is very much the power on the surface, while tradition is the power from within. Christmas is approaching. For some it does with a Christmas tree, for others with a crib. Nobody would call it fashion to set it up in the house.
But then you see houses where you are not sure that you didn’t go on a time travel very much back into the past; everything appears of being the “normal” (traditional) outfit of a decade or even a century well passed by. Is that old-”fashioned” or simply “traditional”? Some people live in such environment today, not only furniture but convictions and rituals and somehow the border to fashion turns to be increasingly blurred:
When I came to Sri Lanka, an island of 21 million people, (approx. 75 % Singhalese, 18 % Tamils and 7 % Arabs) out of which 70% adhere to the (Theravada)-Buddhism, 15 % to Hinduism and an equal number of 7.5 % to Christianity respectively Islam, well, in those days 3 years ago Islam – as far as one can see it- was not remarkably “visible” in this country. As a matter of fact no woman could have been recognized of being a Muslim (while men wore white knitted caps).
If we go for a walk in the park within the last weeks and months we are thrilled to “see” an abundance of Muslim women. They must have been around 3 year ago either, but they were not “visible”. Because today they are covered with a (normally dark) garment from top to toe, the hair is totally covered and increasingly often they wear the famous “veil”, that covers the face leaving only a thin strip for the eyes open.
There has never been this “tradition” in Sri Lanka of covering Muslim women up– as we were told. This is a “fashion” (many people of Muslim faith seem to have become pro-active within the last years, they adhere to it in many countries), or it is still a tradition that simply goes global (another taste of globalization)? Throughout the world there are kind of awakening movements for Muslims, the pride to be part of this community, of this faith (for some a menace) has found its very expressive paradigm in this assertive clothing. Fashion or tradition?
Some – historically interested by-watcher- may recall the European paintings of the 12th century, when knights engaged in their belligerent pilgrimage to Jerusalem; the Christian cross covered their entire back. And in the years and centuries when kings of non-Hindu faith reigned India (from king Asoka and his Buddhist state religion to the Afghan kings of Islamic faith – by the way “responsible” for the most beautiful vestiges of architecture in entire India) people learned to make “mudras” with their fingers (resembling temples and Hindu semiotics): symbols of their Hinduism religion – as their faith was forbidden in public. Symbols are icons; they are part of tradition.

Please bear with me and my – habitual (“traditional”?) - thinking aloud about fashion and/or tradition. Arguably, more power resides in the rituals – and according to the great scholar of myths and rituals, Joseph Campbell, men can – anyhow- not do without them.

But traditions may erode; fashions come and go; as they are DIVIDERS we ought to celebrate rather the latter. #

For Christians I should now say: Merry Christmas! (With a tree or a crib or without, celebrating with candles, with all the other small and tiny traditional elements that constitute this so special evening in the year. They create the beautiful Christmas atmosphere.)