Quote Originally Posted by kiltedwolfman View Post
The point if there is one is that while knowing, observing and respecting traditions are very important we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that at one time everything we hold as revered tradition was to those at the start just a habit done by people who were likely breaking the rules to begin with.

Then again I could be way off base and doomed to incur the wrath of many! LOL ;)
Perhaps a subject for discussion in Victoria next week, Kiltedwolfman . It may be that in this thread we are talking of many things, sometimes at cross-purpose and perhaps with some little degree of misunderstanding. If the tradition we are referring to is "Scottish", then that is the tradition. If we are referring to Scottish-Canadian or Scottish-American, then we must accept these as the children of the Scottish parent and not the parent itself.

Scottish tradition is evolving, just as the others are, but the vast majority in this forum do not live in the culture that has produced that tradition. They live in other cultures with other pressures for change. That is as it should be, of course, and is certainly not "wrong". It is the child developing its own tradition, not to be confused with the parent's, except as a child is the product of its parent.

Perhaps, too, we often confuse "tradition" with "fashion". The latter may, if it persists for a long time and is not a trend, become the tradition, but what is fashionable and becomes traditional in one culture isn't necessarily fashionable and does not therefore become traditional in another.

For example, tartan. In Scotland it is neither traditional nor fashionable to wear a tartan with which you are not connected (one exception: kilt hire). That's how the "universal" tartans evolved: tartans for those who had no connection. Certainly there are those who deviate from this tradition. In North America -- perhaps because there are so many who want to wear tartan but have no connection -- it has become fashionable to wear any tartan if you like the sett and the colours. I suspect that that will become the tradition. But it is the tradition of the child, the Scottish-Canadian or the Scottish-American, and not the tradition of the parent.

It does no good to delve into history and look for a time when tartans were not connected to clans/families and based on that proof attempt to redefine the tradition of the parent. We just need to accept that on the western shores of the Atlantic new traditions are being developed and that although they are based on the traditions of Scotland they should not be confused and called "Scottish".

So maybe in this thread we should define whether we are talking about the living Scottish tradition, the new traditions that are Scottish-Canadian, Scottish-American or Scottish-Elsewhere and what is fashionable today in any one of these, but not necessarily common to all.

To paraphrase Kiltedwolfman, I have perhaps now opened myself up to the wrath of many.