Maybe I'm the only one who does this, but I really like creating new traditions in my works that I wish existed in real life. One thing in particular is having the "graduation" song (aka Land of Hope and Glory) actually sung out by the characters during a graduation, and it's paying homage to their country and the hopes they have of their graduates impacting it positively and contributing amazing things to its future.
Does anyone else do this or is it really just me lol
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I take a similar approach, but I try to start a step or two backwards from the tradition itself by looking for the environmental inciting incident. In one project, for instance, I designed a mysterious, recurring phenomenon—verdant rain—that spreads an edible lichen across the planet. That life-giving rain becomes the miraculous bedrock for their religious practices and economic security, which organically spawns all of their resulting cultural traditions and artifacts.
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That’s awesome Adam J. Spencer. I haven’t explained any of mine yet, they’re just traditional traditions I guess you can say lol, always there for as long as anyone remembers. I haven’t made it a point to explain their origins.
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That's a very interesting aspect of world building. Every world has a history, even the fictional, so it's more than reasonable that a fictional world would have traditions, holiday, etc...
For a fun but kinda corny example, take a look at Avatar and the Na'vi religion. It's as new as it is familiar.
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Great topic, Banafsheh Esmailzadeh! Creating traditions is one of the most rewarding parts of worldbuilding because it makes a fictional world feel lived-in—like it has a real history that existed long before your story even begins. I do this quite a bit in my own projects, especially within folklore and dark fantasy, building entire cultures around original rituals that reveal ancient truths, awaken forgotten forces, or prepare characters to fight creatures. It can naturally help shape who your characters are and make the world feel authentically alive.