Upward Bound: First year. Воробьева М.Г - 151 стр.

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— 151 —
CUSTOMS AND TRADITIONS
TEXT
Ex. 1. Read and translate the text.
Keeping Up Traditions
Customs and traditions take a very important place in everyday
life. Traditions mean integration. People create their own customs
and rituals in their strong drive to build community around
themselves, such as celebrating certain occasions, cooking definite
dishes for some holidays, wearing certain clothes on different
occasions, setting up fan clubs, organizing sports sections, etc.
Customs and traditions provide assurance and an answer to
the question «What am I going to do on that occasion?» They provide
a framework, a set of signs and symbols, rules and roles, and
appropriate dress. The greatest events in the passage of life-birth and
death, christening and wedding — all have their traditional customs.
Following them means respect for our predecessors who passed
them over to us.
However, the rapid scientific-technological development in the
19th and especially 20th century greatly contributed to the transition
from a predominantly rural-agricultural to an urban-industrial, even
post-industrial, society. This has resulted in a loss of the initial meaning
of many customs and traditions that went without saying still couple
of centuries ago. Nowadays there is a dangerous tendency that if they
are even maintained in the folklore, less and less people will
remember the true meaning and importance such customs and
traditions had in earlier times.
Especially people of the younger generation tend to estrange
themselves from their age-old traditional heritage and its true meaning.
This happens often because of the association with the term «tradition»
that bears a connotation of something fossilized and obsolete, and
the tendency of customs and traditions over time to turn into
meaningless and rigid prescriptions. This is not necessarily bad. Why,
it is a natural process when many customs get given up as no longer
relevant, and are only referred to in history. After all, there must
also be room for cultural renewal and the uprise of new customs and
traditions that correspond to the hopes and joys of today’s world.

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