It struck me that there might be a dark side--rituals that disconnect and repel us from each other. Are there rituals in unhappy marriages, or rituals that reinforce solitude?
Some tribal recitations are ritualistic, even though they're not actions, for example the conversational challenge/response that assures your comrades that you're still one of them."
Decades ago we got a year-long subscription to Chocolatier (I think that was the name) magazine. Out of the 12 issues we recall nothing but the recipe for cranberry nut bars, which everybody liked and we've made every year as a Christmas bar since: a spontaneous tradition. In the other direction, early in our marriage we didn't do anything in particular for Advent, but some time ago we decided to make the Advent candle time a tradition, and barring the sometimes illness it has been so ever since: deliberately creating a tradition, with our particular flavor.
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Fanny Kemble, the Shakespearean actress and wonderful diarist, had some thoughts on rituals:
"There is a species of home religion, so to speak, which is kept alive by the gathering together of families at slated periods of joy and festivity, which has a far deeper moral than most people imagine. The merry-making at Christmas, the watching out the old year, and in the new, the royalty of Twelfth-night, the keeping of birth-days, and anniversaries of weddings, are things which, to the worldly-wise in these wise times, may savour of childishness or superstition ; but they tend to promote and keep alive some of the sweetest charities and kindliest sympathies of our poor nature. While we are yet children, these days are set in golden letters in the calendar, long looked forward to, enjoyed with unmixed delight, the peculiar seasons of new frocks, new books, new toys, drinking of healths, bestowing of blessings and wishes by kindred and parents, and being brought into the notice of our elders, and, as children used to think in the dark ages, therefore their betters. To the older portion of the community, such times were times of many mingled emotions, all, all of a softening if not of so exhilarat ing a nature. The cares, the toils, of the world had become their portion, some little of its coldness, its selfishness, and sad guardedness had crept upon them, distance and various interests, and the weary works of life had engrossed their thoughts, and turned their hearts and their feet from the dear household paths, and the early fellowship of home; but at these seasons the world was in its turn pushed aside for a moment, the old thresholds were crossed by those who had ceased to dwell in the house of their birth, kindred and friends met again, as in the early days of childhood and youth, under the same roof-tree, the nursery revel, and the school-day jubilee, was recalled to their thoughts by the joyful voices and faces of a new generation, the blessed and holy influences of home flowed back into their souls, at such a time, by a thousand channels, the heart was warmed with the kind old love and fellowship, face brightened to kindred face, and hand grasped the hand where the same blood was flowing, and all the evil deeds of time seemed for a while retrieved."
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/55632.html
Wonderful diarist indeed!
There was a book "Let's Make A Memory" about child-raising in the 80s. We have been very intentional in our traditions, though many gradually fell by the wayside as the children grew and left.
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