...in other words

It's Tuesday... time for another inspirational quote from ...in other words, the weekly quotation meme that I discovered last week.

I really enjoyed participating in this one last week, and the quote definitely inspired me! However, I'm having a little bit of difficulty with this week's quote, which is:

Tradition is what you resort to when you don't have the time or the money to do it right. --Kurt Herbert Alder

First of all, the idea of "tradition" immediately makes me think of the holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc.). And, personally, I find that it can be both time-consuming and expensive to uphold traditions.

When I was a kid, one of my favorite Christmas traditions was that my mom would take the time (lots of time!) to bake these absolutely yummy sugar cookies and decorate them individually with icing. They were the best!! But, at some point, as my brother and I got older, that "tradition" fell by the wayside... because it was too time-consuming and labor intensive.

Another tradition... Thanksgiving dinner, with all the trimmings. When I got married and started cooking our family's "traditional" feast, I realized how darn expensive it is. Not to mention that it takes ALL DAY to cook the meal. Definitely not something we "resort to when you don't have the time or money." If that were the case, we'd eat Kentucky Fried Chicken for Thanksgiving dinner.

So, I guess I'd have to say I don't agree with Mr. Alder. Maybe I'm interpreting "tradition" differently than he is, though... I'll have to give this some more thought this week.