Then what is a tradition we start ourselves?

It certainly CAN be that, but I don't think that's the full extent of the definition. It's a thought-provoking quote though.

“ Then what is a tradition we start ourselves?“

A wish? Or a hope that what we do is something we want others to enjoy enough that they continue?

Edited

Then what is a tradition we start ourselves?

It's you peer-pressuring your children to keep something up when you're dead ??

Then there are my children who, when something is different, wail “but it’s TRADITION!”

"Then what is a tradition we start ourselves?" If it lives on after you're dead, then it's pressure from dead people (not peer if it's your children). That doesn't mean it's not a tradition worth carrying on, but some traditions are held to because mom and dad or grandparents always did it this way, not because it's necessarily how their progeny would carry on.

It is an old idea and I think came from GK Chesterton in his book the Orthodoxy chapter four, “the Ethics of Elfland”, “Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.” “Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father.”

I would say when the person who started a tradition dies--so often does the tradition. I can't think of any traditions I carry forward that aren't one's I love which doesn't' fit the negative connotations of peer pressure IMHO

Funny story, a couple of years ago, they sent out an email campuswide something to the effect of "We are going to start a new tradition!" I'll be honest I can't remember what that was particularly, but someone from the history department responded that traditions are something that is started organically and then becomes a tradition, and they're not something that can be proclaimed prospectively.