I was visiting my mom today. 🙂 We were talking about strange traditions, and I remembered a story I once heard. It went something like this:

One day a Mother was showing her daughter how to make roast beef. As she prepared the meat she cut it in half and placed it in the roasting pan. The daughter asked her why she cut the roast in half, to which she replied, “I don’t know. This is how my Mama did it.”

The next day the daughter asked her grandmother why she cut her roasts in half before cooking them, to which she replied, “I don’t know. This is how my Mama did it.”

The following day the daughter visited her great-grandmother who was living in a nursing home. She curiously asked why she used to cut her roasts in half before cooking it, to which her great-grandmother replied, “Oh, land sakes, it was because my wood stove was too small for the roast to fit whole. I had to cut it in half to have have enough to feed the family.”

My Mom laughed out loud when I told her this story. How many times are traditions created out of necessity? What starts out as a need quickly becomes a preference handed down from generation to generation.

Do you have any traditions that seem strange to you? Have you ever asked how they originated? You may be surprised to hear the story. You never know until you A.S.K.