A new husband watched curiously as his bride prepared to place a ham in the oven. Before putting it in to cook, she took a knife and carefully trimmed off both ends of the ham. The husband asked, "Why did you do that? I'm not an expert at cooking hams, but I don't think I ever saw anyone cut off both ends of the ham before cooking it."

The wife answered, "You know, I don't really know. I never cooked a ham before, but that's the way my mother always did it." Her curiosity aroused, she telephoned her mother and asked her why she always cut off both ends of a ham before she cooked it.

"Now that you mention it, I don't know, dear," her mother replied. "That's just the way your grandmother always did it. Other than that, I honestly don't have a clue."

Determined now to unravel this mystery, the young bride then telephoned her grandmother and asked her why she always cut off both ends of the ham before she cooked it. "Well, sweetheart, " her grandmother said, "the first oven we owned wasn't big enough to put a whole ham in, so I had to cut the ends off to make it fit. After that, I guess it just became a habit!"

You see? That's traditionalism – when we do whatever we do without knowing why we do it, but continue to do it anyway because that's what we've always done! Does that make sense?