Traditions; are they fixed before our time?

Traditions, its something we would like to preserve or change? It's something that we need to follow because it's passed on from generations to generations which we did not have a chance to vote, choose, change, set or decide or it's something like a myth that if we don't follow, something undesirable events or misfortune will fall on one miserably? What if I was in the era when traditions was set, could i have done it another way? Would I be setting certain regulations or rules that my next generation will choose to bend? It's not that I choose not to follow traditions or believing certain myths...I just want to know, would I or you have set it in another way if I was in that generation...