Tradition, Tradition

Today’s news chum post is about some traditions that have recently been in the news, in chronological order:

• The Ball Drops. We all know about the ball dropping in Times Square on New Years Eve. But that’s not the only thing that is dropped. Here are 36 other things that are dropped on New Years Eve, including Peeps, Moon Pies, fleas, carps, olives, beach balls, duck decoys, drag queens,… well, you get the idea.
• Say It In Rhyme. Here’s a Naval tradition you may not know about: Evidently, the first log book entry of the calendar year must be composed in rhyme. Furthermore, it must be a real log entry with all the requisite information. This is evidently quite a challenge for some naval officers. Here’s an example cited in the article: “Once upon a Midwatch dreary / While I pondered weak and weary / I saw the ghost of Father Time / The parting spirit of ‘59.”
• Formal Fridays. Evidently, a number of companies are casual all the time. As a result, they have turned casual Fridays on their head to create “Formal Fridays”, when everyone must dress up for work. Here’s how the tradition got started. “One early proponent was the Barbarian Group, a New York digital marketing and creative agency. It started at Barbarian’s Boston office as a 2004 cocktail-fueled joke that led to email invites with images of Ken and Barbie dolls dressed in formal duds. The invitations motivated staffers to get dolled up each Friday. Kevin Chan, the senior art director who spearheaded Barbarian’s Formal Fridays on both coasts, says the company has “always loved to challenge and subvert—to do things a little differently.” He also says the work attire for “Barbarians” is otherwise pretty casual (he is known for his tank tops), so Formal Friday, now a regular occurrence, “gives Barbarians a good excuse to get formal one day of the week.””