By including a Finnish-American component in this year's Festival, the Smithsonian Institution Folklife Program reaffirms its commitment to plans specially developed for the 1976 Bicentennial Festival. The program, called "Old Ways in the New World," was intended to dispel much of the "melting pot" notion of American culture by showing that many traditions brought from the Old World have tenaciously survived and developed in their new setting.

When immigrant groups arrived here, the "Old Ways" of cooking, singing, dancing, building, and playing they brought with them were often their only means of maintaining cultural identity. Eventually the descendants of many of these ethnic groups, by retaining these practices, have developed a pride in their heritage. Often they choose a particular day, such as a patron saint's feast day, to celebrate their ethnicity. Such an annual occasion becomes a real "homecoming," when distant family or community members return to their roots, eating traditional foods with foreign names and joining in Old World dances to the accompaniment of music and instruments from outside the mainstream of American popular culture.