A Quotation I Like

The list of G.K. Chesterton quotes that I treasure would be very long. Here is one that isn't even one of my favourites, but I still really like it:

Mr. Shaw has no living traditions, no schoolboy tricks, no college customs, to link him with other men. Nothing about him can be supposed to refer to a family feud or to a family joke. He does not drink toasts; he does not keep anniversaries; musical as he is I doubt if he would consent to sing. All this has something in it of a tree with its roots in the air. The best way to shorten winter is to prolong Christmas; and the only way to enjoy the sun of April is to be an April Fool. When people asked Bernard Shaw to attend the Stratford Tercentenary, he wrote back with characteristic contempt: "I do not keep my own birthday, and I cannot see why I should keep Shakespeare's." I think that if Mr. Shaw had always kept his own birthday he would be better able to understand Shakespeare's birthday—and Shakespeare's poetry.

The passage occurs early on in Chesterton's book George Bernard Shaw. I don't think I've ever read the whole book.

I treasure this passage because it's a sort of photo-negative of what I would wish for, both for myself and everybody else. The more living traditions the better; the more college customs the better; I wish we had more toasts and sing-songs. In this passage, Chesterton is describing something which has no exact word to cover it. I know, because I've often looked for one.

Alas, there isn't nearly enough of such things in the world for my liking, and certainly not enough in my own life. In fact, there's hardly any in my own life. My attempts to create traditions and running jokes and customs have been almost entirely unsuccessful. Nobody is interested. Even when it comes to this blog, all my little traditions-- posting "The Burning Babe" by Robert Southwell at Christmas, changing the colours to reflect the liturgical seasons, throwing in random pictures of Dirk Benedict-- never really provoked the slightest interest or amusement.

Yes, I want cheese with this whine.

I often want to ask people about their personal traditions, school traditions, etc. But I suspect they'd just think I was trying to be whimsical. It's socially bad form to talk about anything that's actually interesting.