3rd topic alternative

Hi everyone. You have 2 weeks for the third topic but I'll put it up now in case you get bored over the "vacation" week.

There will be 3 topics you can choose 1 or comment on all 3.

The second is Traditions

Tradition is the transmission of a cultural heritage from generation to generation.

Currently, with globalization, openness to the world and the mix of cultures that results, it seems that some traditions are lost. Because of the discovery of new practices from elsewhere, some local traditions are forgotten and I find that a bit pity ... It is true that there are some traditions that I did being small and I no longer do this today like flip pancakes with a gold coin for Candlemas or speak local dialect with my grandparents.

So I think that traditions have both positive and negative aspect.
On the one hand, I think they allow to remember some practices of our ancestors, to keep the memory of the past, to know where we come from ...
However, traditions can sometimes become a barrier to innovation and change. For fear of shake up some habits, some people consider innovation as a threat. One example is the case of technology in the world of fashion. For many years, luxury brands have not used the Internet to sell their products because it was contrary to the tradition and the luxury image. (In fact, they were mainly afraid of the risks of counterfeiting!)
This is also the case in religion, where traditions and customs have an important place. Any change is also seen as a threat.

Fortunately, in recent years, I feel that attitudes are changing and one arrives increasingly to reconcile tradition and innovation.
Thus, the Pope has more than 10 million followers on Twitter, and on the side of fashion, textile innovations are emerging (I think particularly at the t-shirt called Silic : is stain resistant and waterproof)!

Traditions are at the heart of our cultural heritage.

With modernization and advanced technologies, more and more people forget their mores including those transmitted by the old generation. The traditions are abandoned. We can understand this phenomenon by the increase of the world population, today all which interests the young people are the technology and the new innovations. They think that "old people" are getting off-side versus trends. For me, this technological breakthrough represents a gap between the generations which cannot communicate any more between them. It would be necessary to give consciousness to the young people that the traditions represent a weight in the history but also for their own interests.

The best solution, it's to protect the traditions while innovating. We can make a mix 2. For example, in tourism sector, they propose us to visit different workshops like glass factory to make your own glass and this, recquire the know-how of craftsmen. But it's necessary to admit that objects hand-made makes a cost and need time (today, people are overwhelmed). To innovate in the direction to attract people towards the old customs can in one side cultivate them and in another side, protect the traditions.

We can perceive traditions around this world as a culture of thought and reflection. Some traditions highlight differences but other reflect similarities. The curiosity sparks questions and we look for answers.
Taking a quick look on our world, we can distinguish some evident differences between Asian, European, African and Latin American cultures and traditions. Apart from favorite colors, foods and music, traditions shape the way we view the world. A well intended gift, such a hand watch cand bring joy to a European but grievance to a Japanese. But traditions are not necessarily trite and void of consequences as one might imagine. For example, practices which are religiously encouraged in some parts of the world, are not considered appropiate in Europe.
But we can also say that these are not always offensive, one of European's most chersished tradition is respect for peoples, states and nations outside Europe. It provides a sense of security, stability and pride.
Traditions shape the imagine of a nation. For example, for European culture we can mention here the greatest writers as Voltaire which advocated freedom of religion, freedom of expression, or Victor Hugo who spoke against death penality, social injustice. I believe they are the treasures of European traditions.
Since Moldova is geographically a central European country, I ascribe to the general Greek-Roman and Thracian traditions observed in all over Europe. But Moldova has some peculiarities for example : for Moldovans, welcoming guests with bread, a pintch of salt and a glass of red wine is a sign of hospitality. Another interesting Moldavian tradition is stealing the gate a man's house is seen as a desire to ask the hand of his daughter (it's about St. Andrew's Day). The important thing is that these traditions are very optional served with a pitch of humor.
To end, I will repeat that we perceive traditions in this world as a culture of thought and reflection. It's a behavior of our ancestors.

Tradition is a huge part of our culture. It doesn't matter where you come from, everybody has their own traditions. Sometimes they come from your family, your religion or your country.
There are a lot of positive factors tied to traditions. On the one hand, you can get the feeling of belonging to a certain group. By exercising the same traditions, one feels closer to another.
But on the other hand, traditions can also hinder the development of some countries or regions. For example the catholic church still has a lot of traditions which are followed by an enormous part of the world's people. But: Is it really a good idea to follow traditions which are clearly overruled by now?
Even with a people-loving pope like the current one, the catholic church is not able to admit that it is necessary to have birth control. That there are other forms of marriage than the traditional one. That a priest does not have to live in celibacy anymore. A lot of problems occur by following these traditions - so why are those not already broken?

So as mentioned before, traditions can be very positive - but one has to think about their meaning before following them blindly.

Since others mentioned the positive and negative aspects of tradition, I’ll talk about the interesting difference in tradition between different countries. We all know that every country even every region has his own tradition because of different origin. Let’s take an obvious instance in the traditional festival Halloween. Maybe that’s when many of you had a jolly time recently.

As far as I know, Halloween is a celebration observed in a number of countries to remembering the dead and all the faithful departed. The most common activities must be trick-or treating and attending Halloween costume parties. Besides, people make the jack-o’-lantern or light candles on the graves of the dead. It depends on not only the region but also the religion. Christians make the campfire not only to scare the ghosts away but also to lead them to return. In some parts of the world, Christians visit graveyards to pray and place flowers and candles on the graves of their loved ones. Catholics cut off the lights in order to not be found by ghost and they dressed like the ghost to scare them away.

For the Chinese Halloween or it’s better to call it the festival of dead in china, I should say there’s something in common but also some interest difference. We make a feast and pray for the dead ancestors sometimes release the lights which are made of paper in the river or the streamlet. The biggest difference is that we burn up the fake money which is also made of paper. It means that the money we burned off will be used by our ancestor, we send them money to ensure their life in the heaven and they will pray for us. Now, things change all time, people begins to burn the fake luxury house and fake household appliances. Which I think is a waste… I don't know if you have the same problem when you celebrate festivals in your country.

To sum up, we should respect the tradition no matter where it comes but we should also prevent people overacting.

As a Chinese, I’d like to talk about my understanding of Chinese traditional culture. Although the traditional culture has his own unavoidable defects, his feudal ideas, concept of grade, the conservatism etc. all makes Chinese suffering in recent history, we have to admit that it has a great effect on our daily life, our act, even on our thinking. In other words, the traditional culture is our id card, it represent our past, present and future.
When it comes to traditional festivals, we know that every nation has its own unique traditional festival. But as Wei said that western festivals are being more and more popular in China in recent years, and some of our own unique traditions being more and more forgotten. Therefore, here, I want to talk about some reasons for this phenomenon.

First of all, it’s because of the improvement of people’s economic life. With the rapid development of economy, people’s living standards are improving, so, the pursuit of spiritual life’s rich and colorful becomes an inevitable result. People want to be relaxed after finish a heavy work during the festival and celebration, now more and more western festivals come into China and played down his strong religious, and turned to give priority to the entertainment, which just meet people’s needs in some extend.

Then, media’s excessive attention for those western festivals is also an important reason. Every major holiday in the west, like Christmas, Valentine’s day and April fool’s day, reported widly by many newspapers and magazines t, from the background to its special way of celebration, it’s no doubte that they played a role of promoting.

Finally, I think that this is a cultural globalization brought by the economic globalization. The emergence of a culture will finally be accept or reject to another culture. Western festival is more and more popular in China can explain that it’s accepted in China.
In summary, my attitude toward traditional culture is positive. We not only need to develope our glorious tradition, but also need to accept foreign’s excellent culture.

Globalization forced to celebrate some feasts we don't have in our culture originally imo.

Best recently example is for me Halloween, just take out the commercial aspect and only put the "traditionnal side". That's just a no-sense as we even don't celbrate it in our country.

It's like celebrating 14th July in USA, in my opinion we created an atmosphere to set up such feasts, but real important days are coming from culture and our history : that's the tradition.

In my point of view,tradition can be a kind of food or clothes,a principle,a special significance,or a symbolic meaning.Tradition is a part of our life ,sometimes,our grandmas tell us a meaningful story,that's the tradition.
However,in the modern society,the tradition does exist around us,but we always ignore it.For example,no one would like to study and inherit some traditional skills,some traditional culture disappears little by little with the development of new technology or new art.Possibly,the new art is original from the traditional art,so it comes to another question--reservation and innovation.
we are supposed to respect tradition,we should more understand tradition.We need to distinguish which are deserve to reserve and protect while others are supposed to wipe out.For example, Chinese Confucianism conclude the number of wisdom,but it also concerns the old look(common people give service to the king).In a word ,we have to treat it reasoningly.

Tradition means for me something cultural in a country or a region. It can be about food, clothes, religion, etc. Most of the time, tradition is in connexion with the history of the country (or region). We can celebrate this tradition every year at the same date and everybody knows what kind of celebration there is this special day. For example, every Christian knows that Christmas is the 25th of December. They celebrate the Christ's birth. Firstly, there is the Christmas Eve dinner the evening of 24th December. After that, when he has a full stomach, a Christian goes to midnight mass. Midnight because at midnight is the 25th of December, so Christ's birth day. Christian people do prayers in churchs. Then, they go to sleep because next day is full of strong emotion !! In fact, we receive presents left by "Christmas father" in feet of the Christmas tree. The Christmas tree is one of the Christmas symbol. We decorate this tree around one month before Christmas. Christian people put nativity scene at feet of Christmas tree. All children (and big children) have Advent calendar to kindly wait the "Christmas father". This one contains one compartment per day between the first day of December and the 25th of December. Most of the time, there is chocolate inside Advent calendar but it can be another food or a toy for example.
So, now, come back to the 25th of December... People give presents to other people of their family. Christmas is a family celebration. Then, we get togehter with all of our family and we eat (a lot, again !!). Christmas food traditions are : turkey and Yule log but we can diversify, it depends on the family. And we start again next year, and the year after next year, etc.

I spoke about a Christian tradition but I can speak about italian food too for example. Everybody knows that italians are experts of pastas, pizzas, mozzarella, risottos, coffee and ice cream... And I should quote another kind of tradition.

traditions are all customs practiced for years to this day , they are specific to each country or each group of people who are part of the same origin or the same family

they are usually practiced during events g or reminding day , During that people may wear
special clothes like the Scottish kilt , it may also be actions such as gestures during prayers by priests

So,the tradition is as a mark or signature for the country or those who practice

According to the people, there are traditions that are good and some that are bad , traditions that contain rituals in India are as unpopular as they make sacrifices to gods that don’t even exist.
People prefer simple traditions that not involve controversial practices

Traditions belong to the culture of countries, but they also belong to the habits and the customs of families, sport teams, group of friends, networks and others. So traditions have positive and negative aspects because on the one hand they offer a good means to celebrate important events in personal or social life and they contribute to create a good atmosphere between people of a country or an other group. Besides traditions embody the history and it's a means not to forget people which struggle in that history. However, on the other hand traditions could also be a means to stay in the habits in a kind of protection or fear of the unknown. If traditions aims at staying always in the same way of life and if they stop people to change, they just seem to refuse a kind of progress... The good deal between progress and tradition is very hard to find. Nevertheless, countries like India , to what extent could embodize the exchange between traditions and progress and it could stand for a country where traditions are also a springboard for growth and development.

In my opinion, traditions are good in a way they're gathering people together, but i think they souldn't restrain our way of living with norms and standards. We should be able to live our life the way we want and don't be influence by rules that belong to the past and are never reconsidered. They are a great opportunity to share activities in community but they can also exlude some categories of people because of standards.
Everybody should be able to appropriate traditions in the way they want, it souldn't be a way of exclusion but rather be a way of gathering.

tradition is very important for a country because its is hystory . If a country loose her tradition , he loose a part of is past and its very important for young people to know how the people live before , what they make and other think . Of course many tradition have to disappear because we dont live in the same world and some tradition can shock people of other country . But many tradition have to survive for the history .
And we can have different type of tradition like family traditon (always the same vacation , ...) . Of course , is not the good definition of the word but this expression is enter in everyday language .

I think that for every culture tradition is something irrepeaceable because it is an important part of national consciousness. But interesting and beautiful at the same time is, that each culture has its own identity made by habits and traditions created trough decades.
In my opinion, traditions should be kept for next generations and reminded mainly to young people. But I'm sure that I will lead my children to not forget about traditions, because my parents leaded me that way...
Even traditions are slowly disappearing from our lives...

In my point of view, the traditions are things, events or lifestyle, which are specific for every nation. It's something, what was given to us by our previous generation. I think, that every family has something own as a tradition. For example, my favorite tradition in our family is cooking of Christmas sweets.
In my opinion, there is planty of young people, who don't really care about traditions. Maybe that is the reason, why the traditions are slowly disappearing. I see myself as a person who cares about history and likes traditions. I used to by a member of folk dance group. It was really funny to some of my friends. They didn't understand how can I wear folk costumes or listen to this kind of music. I guess we souldn't forget our history and we should try keep our traditions and teach them to our children. We should never forget that history is repeating and when our grandparents are funny for us, we will be funny for our grandchildren.

As you already know I'm an Erasmus student, coming from Romania, the country where if you are going to visit a villager, to know more about its traditions you will be invited to eat some "sarmale", "mămăliga" and a lot of other specific dishes.
If you stay a while, you can try to take part to a marriage, to see how the brides "hora" is (a Romanian dance in which the performers form a cercle) and maybe to dance with the romanians (if you want to). There is also a tradition, the bride is stolen by someone and the groom needs to "pay" to take her back. Yes, every groom is paying!
What you can also do is to participate at a "cut of a hair bundle"! For me is interresting because when the child is one year old, we have the tradition to cut a hair bundle, to cut something like a cake above his head and we give to him to chose 3 objects from a platter with several objects (like scissors, money, book, pen, etc). In our tradition the first objects he chose will influence his future. So, if one of the objects is the scissors, we say he will maybe become a hairstylist or a tailor and so on. Maybe it is strange, but for us it is something to celebrate.
What is tradition? Tradition, for me, is a word I learnt by practice, it is every cultural act that defines us as a nation. I think that, if we know how this is happening for every nation of every person we meet we will be able to create a true portrait or image of him as a nation, and after we can see him as an individual person. Now, this is a little bit difficult, because of the globalization but it's amazing to join new types of living. It keeps us away of judging without trying to understand why they do it like this and not like us...

The tradition is something that every human acquires in the birth and by growing up. It is a kind of pretext invented by the human being to distance itself from other people who arise from countries or regions different from them. In itself, it is as the human race, we grow up by putting us in head that we are blacks, whites, indians, etc. This kind of details influences our personality and our way of seeing things. I think that it's pity because it is for these reasons that for the most part of time, there are cultural tensions within the human relations. For example, we can see that some of people who come from North Africa, not considered as African. This kind of tensions born because from our birth we inculcate us the fact of being different, trought foods, religion, hobies or others. According to me, I shall say that we should listen to this small organ which beats in us and which makes our person. And especially do not let a tradition make your personality.

I think traditions are so interesting because they tell so much about the philosophy and the way of reasoning of a population! Actually, I think we should have more courses and talks about different traditions at school. Like if from primary school, once a month we had a talk about a tradition from I don't know which civilisation or ethnic group. It would be awesome and give a real opportunity to broaden the mine of people maybe?! And maybe it would even make us prouder of our traditions and more understanding of others traditions!