Tradition is routine. But it is routine which is intrinsically meaningful, rather than merely empty habit for habit's sake. Time and space are not the contentless dimensions they become with the development of modernity but are contextually implicated in the nature of lived activities. The meanings of routine activities lie in the general respect or even reverence intrinsic to tradition and in the connection of tradition with ritual. Ritual often has a compulsive aspect to it, but it is also deeply comforting, for it infuses a given set of practices with a sacramental quality. Tradition, in sum, contributes in basic fashion to ontological security in so far as it sustains trust in the continuity of past, present, and future, and connects such trust to routinised social practices.

DEFINE: Giddens defines tradition as intrinsically meaningful routine, contrasting it with modernity's contentless time and space.

Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Moderni…, loc. 253