(1) Village Idiots:every town should have a crazy guy dressed in cap and bells, for public amusement
(2) The Saturnalia Festival: an end-of-year drunken festival, with lusty wenchs and roast pig!
I want nuns looking like Sister Bertrille, dammit.
Hear, hear. I love watching commencement, when the entire campus comes out in all its medieval glory.
I’d like to see the return of chariot racing. Or just using a chariot to get to work.
LMAO. 
Not exactly a revival, since I’m not advocating the spread of cigarette smoking, but we need something that replaces the social mechanism of asking for, offering, and accepting smokes (and matches). From what I’ve seen in novels and films written in The Age Of Cigarettes, one could often ease tense interpersonal situations by offering a smoke. Asking for a match was a good way to start talking to someone.
OOOH OOOH! I know!!
I’d like to see the return of common courtesy and common sense!
That’s great! Forgive the hijack but did they sing the verses too, or just the chorus that they play at the ballgames now? As I recall from Ken Burns’ baseball documentary, the first verse starts:
“Katie Casey was baseball mad…”
Now back to your originally scheduled thread!
Remember the old days when a fella could masturbate on the bus without the crying and carrying on?
/Ahhh, good times
Return? When was it ever here?
I’m even more old-fashioned than Annie X-Mas. I liked it when porn was regarded as sleazy and kind of difficult to obtain, rather than being the primary reason that a lot of folks own a home computer.
I also miss the obsolete tradition that one civil servant’s modest paycheck could pay a mortgage and raise a family (like my dad’s).
I agree. I’m pretty sure my husband, who is somewhat more reactionary than I, would open the door and spray down a group of carolers with the nearest bottle of Windex or 409 if anyone did that here. Putting the shoe on the other foot, I’m sure my Catholic mother and fundie Protestant father wouldn’t be too thrilled with a group of Wiccans singing Samhain carols on their lawn either.
I’m all for people having whatever religious ceremonies or celebrations they want to have, but not loudly in my driveway.
I miss the tradition of parents discouraging their children from being rude assholes in public. I’m that person who scolds the children of strangers in front of their parents, since the parents seem incapable of it.
I know it’s still pretty common elsewhere, but in America, not that many people have tea-time. I used to love that when I was living in Chile. It was called “onces,” and most of us would put away whatever it was we were doing and have tea or coffee together and just chat for an hour or so in the late afternoon. We do something like that when I visit my mom’s house, but it’s not something I’ve seen done very often in mainstream America. No one really has time.
Chariot racing isn’t gone, it’s just in Utah (well, and Wyoming, Idaho, and Nevada, but their clubs are clearly inferior to the Utah clubs…)
We need more pesants to do the cooking, cleaning and muck out the stables. Reintroduce fudalism, that’s what I say 
Seriously, more street parties and neighbourhood events would be good. It is a shame that in this day and age people are generally too busy to do such things. A lot of what I see wrong in US is that people are affraid of their neighbours and this getting magnified into general fear and distrust.
The 25th of November… Gazpacho Soup Day.
Maybe I’ll revive it this year.
How about the Twelve Days of Christmas? A celebration every day, culminating in 12th Night on my birthday, with a King’s Cake and the Lord of Misrule and all of that fun stuff. Also lots and lots of birds.
I heartily agree - my civil service paycheck is too modest for my liking. I can barely afford the rent on a house with 3 other flatmates and a half share in a cat - let alone a mortgage and family.
While I’m on the topic of families, I’d like to see the return of arranged marriages (because I’m tired of trying to find a partner) and ‘letters of introduction’ (because I’m tired of crazy strangers engaging me in conversation on the train).
Silent films. I love silent films!!!
Plus a basic custom- correct grammar and spelling. Posting here without expletives or descriptions of bosily functions.
Ahem…physician,heal thyself …