# Thinking About Relics and Traditions



## carouselsilver (Apr 3, 2022)

In this time of Covid, I wonder how many things that have started to be the norm now, will one day become so deeply ensconced in our daily lives that we will do them without question? 

I remember a story about a roasting pan. A woman was preparing to roast some meat, and her daughter observed that she cut off the tip of the roast before placing it in the pan. She asked her mother why she did this? Her mother thought about it, then said she honestly didn't know; and that her own mother had also cut off the tip of the roast before baking it. So the little girl's mother phoned _her_ mother and asked this same question. The grandmother laughed and said that when she first married, they owned a roasting pan that happened to be too small, so she always had to cut off the end of it the meat so that it would fit into the pan. So it had become a tradition with no clear understanding of why this particular act was performed.

Lately it seems that whenever a mailed package is late or an appointment is delayed, the excuse is that it is due to Covid. That may in many cases be true, and perfectly understandable. But what about charities no longer accepting clothing donations, or the book drop on the corner no longer accepting unwanted books, because of Covid? No magazines to look at in the waiting room because of Covid. No toys in the waiting room for the children to play with because of covid. Again, understandable, but what if it morphs into something permanently observed? No toys period because of...what was that again? What if, a hundred years from now, there will be some weird, archaic practices that have become cemented in our collective lexicon, such as saying "God Bless you!" when someone sneezes. 

Just a thought.


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