One Sunday afternoon a hungry husband wandered into a busy kitchen where his wife was preparing their traditional Sunday meal of roast and potatoes. As he peered over her shoulder, he noticed that she had cut off 1 ½ inches of beef on each side of the roast. He sat with amazement as she took the leftover meat and casually tossed it into the garbage. He quickly spoke up and said, “WAIT! What are you doing?” “Why are you throwing out all of that meat?” At first she looked at him with a glare, and then she calmly explained, “This is how my mother prepared her roast. I don’t know if there is anything wrong with the meat; that is how we prepare the roast. So, if you have a problem with it, you can talk with her!”

After collecting his thoughts, the husband did just that. He called his mother-in-law and asked, “Mom, I have a question. I was watching how to prepare your roast receipt and I noticed that there is 1 ½ inches cut off each side of the roast. Can you tell me why the receipt calls for you to cut that meat off?” She answered, “Good question, I don’t know…that is how my mother taught me how to make the roast.”

He then called her mother, his wife’s grandmother and asked the very same question. “Grandma, I have a question. I was watching how to prepare your roast receipt and I noticed that there is 1 ½ inches cut off each side of the roast. Can you tell me why that recipe calls for you to cut that meat off?” The grandmother softly chuckled over the phone and said, “Well, when I prepared Sunday dinner, I only had one pan. I had to cut the ends off the roast so it would fit into the pan.”

Here at ProGenealogists® we embrace tradition when it makes sense. Our forward thinking team members at ProGenealogists® are not afraid to question traditions in research and operations to see if they make sense and are efficient for our clients.

The lesson that we can take from this funny story about tradition is simply this … traditions are fantastic to pass on from generation to generation as long as they still serve a purpose. Once they have outlived their purpose, we must find new ways of doing things that will serve us for today. You never know when changing a habit or tradition will put a little more meat on your table!