Rituals are as old as humankind, and they transform over time as our culture changes.
Consider the days when girls were considered the property of their fathers. Marriage was less about love than it was a business transaction—the father giving his daughter to another man and the man promising to support her.
We still see remnants of this ritual in today’s traditional wedding ceremonies, with the father of the bride walking his daughter down the aisle to “give her away” to the groom.
Rituals often involve a rite of passage, a marking of an important stage in someone’s life. We have birth rituals like naming ceremonies, wedding rituals like walking the bride down the aisle and death rituals like a wake or a funeral.
Rituals are a way to publicly acknowledge a change in status or a new stage of life.
But what happens when we don’t have rituals for the new normal in our society?