During the festive season, people observe many traditions. These may differ from place to place, community to community, and time to time, but their presence gives pause to reflect on their functions and to think about whether social media impacts their observance.

At least in the media, the general consensus is that Christmas traditions are dying out.1 Of course, suggesting Christmas traditions are dying out is, itself, something of a tradition in the media.2 However, in this rapidly changing digital age, one question that comes to mind is whether any such traditions will persist for long.

Although Christmas traditions are a distinctly human affair, some answers may be found in the study of animal behaviour and evolutionary theory.

A recent media report suggested that, at least in the U.K., traditions long-honored are now distinctly less popular than they were. People were asked which traditions they observed a quarter of a century ago that they still observe now:

“Out of 22 long-established festive traditions…just one tradition—watching Christmas films—has increased in popularity….”1

Of course, this survey did not ask whether any new traditions emerged to replace the dwindled ones over that period. Traditions are not set in stone, and they do alter, slowly, as society alters—and there are very good reasons why that must be the case.

It could be that there are new digitally-inspired Christmas traditions.

The word "tradition" derives from both Latin and old French and emerged in the 13th and 14th centuries to describe "things handed down"—usually related to religious laws from the Bible's Old Testament. In contemporary psychological terms, a relatively stable set of behaviours becomes a "tradition" when learned from others; that is, a tradition requires social learning.

These tradition-behaviours are passed to other individuals who had not previously performed them before witnessing others observing that tradition. Only a very few people decorate trees with shiny baubles at random, without social bidding, only for themselves, and get any reinforcement from it. This is a socially-learned........

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