The Inner Monologue

Ah, tradition—the societal equivalent of your weird aunt’s antique doll collection: creepy, outdated, and yet somehow still displayed prominently in the living room. Countries around the world cling to their traditions with the fervor of a toddler refusing to let go of a broken toy, even when logic, reason, and basic common sense have all filed restraining orders against it.

Take the United States, for example. A nation founded on the radical idea of secular governance, where the Constitution explicitly forbids religious tests for office and the First Amendment politely asks the government to keep its grubby hands off religion (and vice versa). And yet, here we are, with federal holidays that read like a Sunday school syllabus: Christmas, Easter (observed via the ever-so-subtle “Spring Break”), and enough “In God We Trust” plastered on everything to make a medieval pope blush.

But don’t worry—it’s totally secular! Christmas is just a “cultural holiday” now, a festive season of consumerism, vague goodwill, and a suspiciously bearded man in red who may or may not be a Coca-Cola marketing ploy. Easter? Oh, that’s just about pastel colors and chocolate eggs, nothing to do with resurrection, pinky swear. And let’s not even get started on Thanksgiving, where we celebrate… uh… peaceful colonialism? (Tradition demands we ignore the follow-up chapters.)

The mental gymnastics required to justify these holdovers would make an Olympic athlete weep. “It’s not religious, it’s traditional!”—as if repeating something illogical for 200 years suddenly makes it logical. Meanwhile, try suggesting that maybe, just maybe, we could have a federal holiday for Diwali or Eid, and watch the same defenders of “tradition” suddenly develop a deep, scholarly concern for the separation of church and state.

And the U.S. is hardly alone in this farce. The British monarchy still exists as a taxpayer-funded theme park of hereditary privilege, complete with royal weddings that distract the masses like shiny objects waved in front of sleep-deprived raccoons. Japan maintains an emperor because… well, because tradition (and also anime plotlines). And don’t even get me started on countries where archaic laws—often rooted in religion or long-dead social norms—still dictate everything from marriage to what you’re allowed to wear.

But hey, who needs progress when you can have pageantry? Who needs reason when you can have ritual? And most importantly, who needs coherence when you can just shrug and say, “Well, that’s how we’ve always done it”?

So here’s to tradition—the world’s most persistent cognitive dissonance. May we continue to honor it, long after it stops making sense, because nothing unites people quite like collectively refusing to think too hard about why we do the things we do.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go sacrifice a pumpkin to the gods of Halloween. For tradition.