Traditional Lies
These days it seems that everywhere you look, people are claming that whatever activity they want to do is based on centuries and centuries of tradition. (If you're looking for disclaimers about sweeping generalizations, keep looking...) I just so happen to have two personal examples, both based on my extracurricular activities.
Example number one is belly dance. It's great fun, I've been doing it for a few years, I don't even pretend to claim to be an authority. But some people who do claim to be authorities are in the amusing state of directly contradicting each other. One school of thought says that belly dancing has been happening for generations and generations, doing move X to Z tempo with the arm styling of Y and it's all so Very Traditional and Authentic. Ditto the musical rhythms and the costuming and all the trappings that go with any public performance.
Another school of thought (one that actually echoes the sentiments I learned in school) says that gosh, we don't really know exactly what dance moves people did 500 years ago, nor exactly what they wore, because well golly, nobody wrote it down or wrote it in a language most American belly dancers speak, or took a videotape so we could see it. So we just don't know. This perspective seems to make the other group of people foamy-rabid.
Now, we do more or less know what dance moves were being performed in cabarets in Egypt in the 1930s. You could get on your high horse and imitate those dances and say you're following those to the last shimmy. But to say that what they were doing in the 1930s is the same as what they were doing in the 1830s or 1730s or 330s or 30s B.C.E., well that's just utterly obtuse. Things change over time. Anything that doesn't (like languages) is dead. And there is no dancing for the dead.
My other example could get me in deep doodoo, since I know there are people out there who know more than I do about the subject, but heck, I'm throwing caution to the wind and ranting with the best of the them. Paganism. There's a whole pack of pagans out there getting their knickers in a bind as they get skyclad over how authentic they are and if they're following the exact minutely accurate traditions of pre-Christian Europeans. Dude. History is written by the conquerors, in this case Catholic priests. And if you think a lot of illiterate farmers from over two thousand years ago had their beliefs and rituals accurately transcribed AND those transcriptions lasted without alteration or change for one thousand years, well, just donate your liver and kidneys and other vital organs right now to someone who could put them to better use.
What is the problem with admitting that we don't know if the activities we are doing are founded upon hundreds of years of tradition? Is it a crime to be ignorant? More than the crime of just flat out making shit up and saying it's hundreds of years old? Isn't it more honest to say that well, we did some research and a lot of the sources were in languages that we didn't speak, and the archaeological record is producing some interesting things, but well, it's really a bit premature to be drawing any conclusions? Is it a crime to actually get off your ass, stop making things up, read a few books and then say "Well, gee, the experts don't seem to know, and NEITHER DO I"?
More directly, why do people feel the need to forever validate themselves and their activities? Is your dance any less beautiful if you just make it all up out of the blue? Is the audience any less pleased? Are your spiritual beliefs or connection with the Powers That Be any less real for you if you pronounce Persephone incorrectly? Do you feel less successful just because you're New and Innovative? Well, stop it already. New isn't always good, but Old isn't always better either. The past isn't actually some great golden age of perfection which we can never regain.
Final case in point: haggis. I read recently about a "vegetarian haggis." Now, of course, it's pretty much impossible to make something that is both vegetarian and able to be called haggis, and golly-gee, maybe it isn't authentic, but wouldn't you rather eat some newfangled vegetable thingy than an actual authentic organ-rich, sheep-stomach coated Traditional Haggis? I thought so.