Why we didn't do a class ring for our kid

I have a class ring from when I graduated high school. 

I wore it for one year and then promptly stuck it in a jewelry box when I entered college; once I entered college, I didn't want to be seen as a "high schooler" anymore.  

It has been sitting in that box for 30 years. 

It sits alongside my mother's high school class ring, which has been sitting in a drawer for 60 years. 

I looked up class rings for my daughter's high school just now, and they range in price from $419 to over $1,000, and either of those amounts seems like a lot of money for something that will be worn for a year and then stuck in a draw for the rest of time. 

In college, when there was a some promotion or information given about college class rings, I promptly tossed them. I knew my high school ring was in a drawer; I suspected my college ring would do the same. 

When the idea of rings came up with N, I explained to her my thoughts on rings. We opted to go on a school-related trip with her Spanish teacher in 2022. 

Admittedly, this trip costs considerably more than either $419 or $1,000, but that experience is something she will carry with her for the rest of her life. She will gain a much greater perspective on herself and what the world is and does. 

Of course, part of this decision was easy because there will be no junior ring ceremony due to the pandemic. N isn't in school every day listening to her peers discuss junior rings ad nauseam. 

But it makes me wonder, as I like to do, who decided that junior rings are a thing? And that junior ring ceremonies are a thing? 

I remember virtually nothing of my ring ceremony from high school. I can say with fairly good certainty that it made zero impact on my life. 

[And my senior prom? What I remember is that the entire time I wished that I hadn't brought my long-time boyfriend because I was well on my way to dumping him. I would have had much more fun had I gone stag and just yucked it up with my girlfriends.] 

I can't help but wonder if junior ring stuff isn't all a marketing ploy that the masses have fallen into because people love an excuse to spend money and don't want to be "that" parent (which I totally don't mind being) and they want to make their own children experience everything they did (a bit of reliving their own lives through their children)?

Of course, I'm not a huge traditions person, mostly because I know that traditions change, whether we want them to or not. And forcing a tradition when it is long past its life, is painful and embarrassing and unpleasant.