The curses and the blessings of tradition

When I was a young adult I was a bit sad that my family “had no traditions.” By this I actually meant that we had very little that we carried on from previous generations. My parents generation made a fairly clean break from their parents, not just in my family but in the families of most of our close friends.

We didn’t know the blessings or the curses of long-standing family or community or spiritual traditions. Many of the traditions my parents rejected were toxic, abusive or just unhelpful in modern times. There was Klan involvement in one brach of the family and traditions of family dysfunction in another branch. I was never sorry my parents left that stuff behind and there seemed precious.little of value that they left.

But I was melancholy that we came from such a background, one where our parents had to make that break. And I was young enough that I didn’t yet realize either the great value of the new traditions we created or the real possibility of digging further back than the generations that had become so tainted by abuse, racism and misogyny.

Creative Commons image by Shadowgate

Now after living twenty-two years in another country with my husband’s family traditions at the fore, I do see both the blessings and the curses. And as my compass swings homeward I have a lot to think about.

May 1, the upcoming Beltane celebration in Bohemia, is one of my favorite holidays. I was born in April and grew up amid wildflowers. I guess I’m still kind of a flower child at heart.

I love the idea of a community dancing around a maypole, bedecked with flowers, holding colorful ribbons, laughing, singing, flirting and imbibing something that induces giddiness. But let’s face it, that isn’t really how it mostly pans out.

The one year when I did actually manage to build a maypole in my yard and get some people together to dance around it, I was worked ragged taking care of everything myself, cooking for a crowd, fielding my husband’s resistance to anything that smacks of my spirituality and juggling two emotionally needy adopted toddlers. We got one nice picture but all I remember is exhaustion and conflict.

Most years it wasn’t even an option because we went to my husband’s home village in South Bohemia for Beltane. The tradition there is still alive and kicking. There is a feisty competition between the small villages among the local carp-farming ponds over whose maypole is the tallest. There are even bands of young men who drive around on the eve of Beltane trying to catch their neighbors drunk and dosed off, so that they can cut down their pole.

The poles are raised and the main celebration happens on the evening of April 30. The whole village gathers on the green. A huge bonfire is laid and children bring ragged effigies of “witches” to burn in it. First, girls and women decorate the very top of the maypole with ribbons. Then, it is raised in the old way with teams of men hauling on long two-by-fours propped under the towering hundred-foot tree trunk.

When it is secured upright in a gigantic phallic statement of the village’s honor, the bonfire with all the tattered female figures is lit and the real festivities begin with lots of loud pop music, beer and sausage.

I have enjoyed those festivities many times and felt thankful that my husband’s village kept some old traditions alive. But since my mother-in-law, a level-headed, behind-the-scenes matriarch, died several years ago, extended family dynamics have become increasingly toxic, and the misogynist aspects of the Beltane tradition now appear painfully obvious. This year we’re still on lockdown, but even if we weren’t, I’m no longer sure it is such a good environment for kids.

At the same time there is debate over a Czech Easter tradition, another one with ancient roots and a misogynist twist. The. Monday after Easter, Czech children (previously only boys but now of both genders) go door-to-door, reciting poems while holding ribbon-adorned wands or whips made of willow rods. They lightly tap their wands against the backsides of any women in each household. The women then give them candy and colored eggs.

It’s like trick-or-treating on a spring morning with poetry instead of scary costumes. What isn’t to love?

Weeeell…. the older tradition had only men and boys doing the “caroling” as it’s called. And the wands are apparently supposed to be whips with which to extract treasures from the women. In fact, in many places, grown men also circulate through the village, receiving shots of alcohol in lieu of candy and eggs. And I’ve felt the sting of a purposefully wielded willow whip on occasion.

Many foreigners insist that this Czech tradition is rotten to the core with misogyny. I still have a soft spot for tradition though, left over from my uprooted childhood, and I see ancient roots in this ritual. Most caroling traditions emerged from community need and the sharing of resources. In this one, instead of the poor exchanging music and cuteness for winter treats, it is men coming to women as supplicants with small personal versions of the beribboned maypole and receiving—traditionally at least—eggs, the most potent symbol of fertility and the continuation of life.

Some claim that men are the ones with the power in this ritual because the willow wands are supposed to bestow fertility, beauty and good health on the women, who provide the eggs in gratitude. One friend even speculates that the tradition is a reenactment of the aftermath of the Maidens’ War, a half-myth, half-historical gender-based conflict in eighth-century Bohemia, in which matriarchal and priestess power in the area was finally defeated.

In any event, the tradition is clearly Pagan, which is why the caroling is relegated to Monday, so as not to bother anyone still practicing Christianity in “the most atheist country on earth.” But more than that, I hear the echo of an ancient women-honoring tradition in this ritual. though it certainly has been put to misogynist use.

Our modern view of procreation, fertility and the continuation of life has been turned into a matter of mechanics. The sperm goes in that hole. The egg comes from that thing. The fetus grows in there and the baby comes out that hole. It’s like a very slow vending machine. And women get treated with about as much respect.

But in ancient times, when our ancestors were hunter-gatherers, people might have known in some sense how babies are made, but much of the details was a mystery. And it was quite clear that women held the key to that mystery. That meant that women were at the center of any community and held in a place of honor.

They might not have had all the decision-making power, but they were the givers of life. They didn’t simply give life as a “thank you” for being poked. The continuation of life was the whole point of the community, of the whole shebang. So, I don’t buy the “men bless women with the phallic symbol and then women give life as a token thank you” bit as the ancient origin of the Czech Easter ritual. It doesn't add up.

The ancient origin, regardless of how twisted and changed the ritual has become, is about men in need, asking for the continuation of life and women giving it from a place of honor and power. That’s Czech Easter in a nutshell.

Creative Commons image by Shadowgate

And the witches burned in the fire at Beltane? That too is a modern misogynyst twist on an ancient tradition. Originally the “witch” was supposed to be the goddess or spirit of winter. Fires were lit to mark the turning of seasons and the turning of life to death to life again all over ancient Europe. But today a mere bonfire has lost that awesome power. It is just something to drink beer around and to turn what is of little value to ash.

It all begs the question: Is my soft spot for tradition a foolish impulse?

Traditions cause so much havoc in the world after all. Restrictive religions cause untold pain and suffering in families when parents try to force their children to follow them. National traditions lead to nationalism and bigotry and even play a role in war. Maybe my parents were right to abandon tradition entirely, even if there had been anything there worth salvaging.

Yet, there is another holiday our family celebrates in the spring. That is International Roma Day on April 8. Previously there was some kind of celebration to go to with other families. This year is hard for so many reasons. I managed to make a traditional Romani meal, watch some of our Romani language videos and talk about Romani celebrities with my son. That was about it. At the end of the day, I sat on the edge of my son’s bed and asked him what he remembers about the Romani history we’ve learned over the years.

“It’s boring,” he said, turning away defensively.

Hard and painful is more like it. There was slavery, the Holocaust, reeducation boarding schools, followed by educational segregation, discrimination and ostracism. And he’s seen some of the latter first hand. I promise him that in America, where we are moving in just a few months, most people will think having Romani heritage is pretty cool. No one will harass him about it and they won’t think his skin is all that dark, since the population there is much more diverse.

“I don’t care,” he says. “I only like halushky.”

Halushky is the Romani meal I made—a miraculous recipe without measurements given to me by a Romani language teacher when my children were toddlers. I let the subject drop for now. But I will carry these little bits of tradition with us across the water. Because there is one thing I know for sure that tradition is good for.

All the painful things in Romani history were at their most basic an attempt to stamp out tradition, a people, a way of life. A lot of Neo-Nazis in Central Europe today don’t have a real problem with Roma as long as they don’t know they are Roma and they don’t have any of their old traditions.

We don’t have much from my children’s birth culture, but I know one thing. All the people who survived terrible things in order that my children could live, survived because of traditions of strength and resilience. And my son may not care about it now, but I will keep the memory for the day when he might because these distant echoes were worth fighting for then and they still are.

Maybe the same holds for those of us who still practice earth-honoring, healthy traditions elsewhere. There is an awful lot of toxicity and misogyny that has got in the way. But it is worth wading through it to grasp at the echoes of what was good in our traditions. Because we may not know the names and faces of those who fought to keep those echoes alive through earlier invasions, genocides, plagues and famines, but we know they fought and struggled and won because if they hadn’t, we wouldn’t be able to hear the echoes at all. They would be entirely lost.

I keep on struggling to keep what is good in our traditions alive and to regenerate what is only a thin echo because losing those last echoes would be allowing the forces of oppression, genocide and misogyny to win the last battle. Even if I recreate some completely new tradition that is good and healthy, it would mean saying to those who fought against such great odds to keep the echoes alive that they didn’t matter.

My son is coming to America, and for him alone, it might not matter if he knows he’s Roma. But it would matter to those who fought so hard through unimaginable hardship to keep their traditions alive. So, I’ll carry that too.