Use the Tradition template to describe celebrations, festivals, superstitions, dress codes, and more! If it's about something a group of people does or beliefs, it's probably a Tradition.
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What should I use this template for?
Traditions are at the core of any culture and are often what define them. On World Anvil, Tradition articles are used to write about things people do: celebrations and holidays might be the obvious examples, but superstitions, gastronomy, and body language can also use the Tradition template! Here are some specific examples:
Events and celebrations
If an event happens on a regular basis, it's a Tradition! What "regular" means will depend on your world's cultures (do elves have New Century's Resolutions?), as well as what the event is about. Generally, traditional events are usually celebrated due to cultural, religious, or political reasons (think birthdays, Christmas, and Inauguration Day).
Superstitions and beliefs
Beliefs (religious or otherwise) are a huge influence on the development of traditions, but they're also traditions themselves! For example, walking under a ladder is said to bring bad luck; and in East Asia, there's a tendency to sometimes avoid the number 4 in places like apartment and phone numbers (due to the word "four" in Chinese having a very similar pronunciation to "death"). These all fit the Tradition template and are great ways to flesh out your cultures!
Food and clothing
While the specific ingredients and clothing items would be Items, the way people cook, eat, and dress are all Traditions! And they are often connected to very important parts of society and can hint at a country's history. For example, Vietnam has some modern food (like Bánh mì) that was originally introduce by France! And table manners also change all around the world: in India you traditionally eat with your right hand and in Japan it's socially acceptable to slurp loudly while eating soup.
Body language and mannerisms
The way people use their body in conversation also changes a lot from culture to culture. From the world-famous Italian "pinching-fingers" hand gesture to the East Asian bows and the Indian head wobble, every culture has naturally developed their own ways to add nuance to what they're saying through gesture. But it isn't all about gestures either! How far apart people stand when talking, how you should greet someone you're just meeting, and other conversation manners are also cultural and can be really interesting to write about.
Template walkthrough
The Tradition template has many options and fields, but remember that all prompts are optional! In fact, because there are so many types of tradition, some prompts might not be relevant to you. As always, there's a free-writing section at the top (which we call vignette) and the prompts are under the "+ Prompts" button in the bottom toolbar.
Feature recommendations for traditions
Here are some ideas on how to use other features with traditions:
- Calendars: You can use a calendar to visually display when yearly events and celebrations take place. Check the Guide to Calendars for more information!
- Maps: You could use markers on a map to show where certain traditions are celebrated! Check the Guide to Maps for more information!
Step-by-step guide to writing a tradition
With so much variety in the type of traditions you can write about, you might wonder where to start. Here's some steps you can follow!
- What's the tradition about?
Festivals are a great way to show (rather than tell) something that's important in your world. For example, if you want to highlight the importance of dragons in your world, have a festival that celebrates when humanity managed to befriend them! Or if you need your readers or players to understand a creation myth, have a tradition that includes a dramatic representation of the myth. Basically, replace boring info-dumps with a fun tradition! - How does it integrate with other traditions?
Traditions don't exist in a void, and they usually inspire each other. Take the example in the previous point: if a celebration includes a theatrical representation... well, how does your culture do theater? That's tradition too! If you're writing about dressing codes, how do traditional colors and patterns fit into the picture? This will make your world more complex, and therefore realistic! - Add some chaos!
Unless your world is inhabited by perfect beings, traditions will have a lot of variance and even contradiction. The same celebration might happen differently in different towns, or even in different streets of the same town! Or maybe a food staple of a culture accidentally comes from their worst enemy. These are all ways to add interesting flavor to your world, to create depth, and to have many opportunities for that juicy conflict that's so useful for your stories!
Need more pointers? Take a look at these guides:
- Worldbuilding festivals! 5 ways to use festivals in your story, novel or campaign
- 5 tips for worldbuilding birth traditions
- 5 tips for worldbuilding winter traditions
Community examples for inspiration
Need some inspiration? Here are some tradition articles written by our amazing community!
