Love this line. For me, traditions that make me happy are the ones that I've developed with my kids over the past 5 years, e.g., going to our favorite bagel shop on Saturday mornings. Clearly that's not a cultural tradition, but it's a cherished moment that occupies like 30 minutes every week. I hope besides making me happy that it makes them remember their childhoods fondly. Big Traditions such as Christmas or graduation season, on the other hand, mean less than nothing to me.Traditions have always been and shall always be the method by which old people enforce their cultural mores on young people. That's all they fucking are. That's all they'll ever fucking be.
"Cultural traditions" are those you use to exclude other cultures in your society. "Family traditions" are those you use to include other people in your family. My wife consciously set about to create new family traditions because hers were mostly used to argue why I shouldn't come to holidays when we were dating and mine were, without exception, sources of pain and PTSD.