The traditional transmission of beliefs and knowledge is not one that is sought [...] The “search for a usable past” is something quite different [...] The drumming up of tradition [...] or the recommending of the observance of traditions which were no longer being generally received, represents an ideological transformation of tradition. It is certainly quite remote from the process of traditional transmission.
—Tradition and Liberty: Antinomy and Interdependence, by Edward Shils
For mummers and mumming Eustacia had the greatest contempt. The mummers themselves were not afflicted with any such feeling for their art, though at the same time they were not enthusiastic. A traditional pastime is to be distinguished from a mere revival in no more striking feature than in this, that while in the revival all is excitement and fervour, the survival is carried on with a stolidity and absence of stir which sets one wondering why a thing that is done so perfunctorily should be kept up at all. Like Balaam and other unwilling prophets, the agents seem moved by an inner compulsion to say and do their allotted parts whether they will or no. This unweeting manner of performance is the true ring by which, in this refurbishing age, a fossilized survival may be known from a spurious reproduction.
—Thomas Hardy: The return of the native.
Gotta read Hobsbawm's The Invention of Tradition one of these days.
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