Traditions will always come and go in the US, and as the years go by, it gets easier to predict the ones that will fade. Personally, I can’t remember the last time I saw a line outside a mall for Black Friday. Recently, redditor u/Extreme-Routine3822 asked the r/AskAnAmerican subreddit to share the common American traditions and holidays they believe won’t exist in 25 years. Here are a few they mentioned.
1.”I think class reunions will be more or less entirely dead by then.”
“Social media has rendered them irrelevant.”
2.”I’m really afraid it’s going to be trick-or-treating in your neighborhood! Since that trend took off where parents just park their vans at a church or something, I almost never see it. I bought a house in the cutest little neighborhood and was SO excited for the kids to come by last year, and I didn’t get a single one! There are a lot of kids in my neighborhood, too; I see them all the time. I was so disappointed. I miss small communities.”
3.”I might get some pushback for this, but gender reveal parties are probably not gonna disappear, but they’re gonna go back to the low-key innocent things like slicing into a cake to find out if it’s pink or blue. Or something else might add to it, like doing a name reveal.”
4.”Christmas cards. We used to get dozens when I was a kid. Almost every family sent them. Now I only get a couple and only send one or two.”
5.”Black Friday. It’s already dying, and I think it’ll be basically dead in that time span. Nobody is gonna rush at midnight to save $50 on a TV anymore.”
“At least in the traditional sense of being lined up out the store and waiting with a bunch of people for it to open, thanks to it being extended to last all weekend now or even longer and online shopping.”
6.”The Miss America pageant. It’s strange now to think how big an annual event it still was in the ’80s and ’90s. I think for a few years, they stopped even televising it. On that note, live broadcast television through turning on the TV and flipping through the channels to see what’s on. There will still be live events, of course, but in 25 years, those may be accessed just through apps. It was only recently that ‘appointment TV’ still provided a common reference point for masses of Americans.”
7.”This is more state-specific, but hopefully, it’s Robert E. Lee’s birthday, Jefferson Davis’s birthday, and Columbus Day.”
8.”Block parties. I don’t think they even do them anymore.”
9.”I feel like the days of private fireworks are waning due to the fire danger, injury, impact to pets, etc. Maybe they’ll never go to zero, but I think it will be in the margins. There might be an increase in professional shows, with the role of drones increasing.”
10.”I used to really enjoy going to polling places on Election Day and saying hello to neighbors who also were there to vote and the poll workers who were usually the older retirees in the neighborhood. They typically knew everyone by name, and they’d ask about kids, etc. This has no longer been the case for the past few elections (especially since COVID). I miss it!”
11.”Daylight savings.”
“Yeah, almost everyone hates changing the clocks. We just can’t agree on when to stop.”
12.”Mischief Night. We all have phones now, so casually vandalizing someone’s house with eggs and toilet paper could be filmed, and well, you know the rest.”
