Importance of Ritual

What is the link between ritual, culture, and society? For time out of mind, women’s greatest duty was the kitting together of social fabric and passing down culture to their children. Whether you agree with that role, it has long been part of the social contract we all willingly or tacitly agree to. As part of that, women passed down certain rituals that acted as the glue for culture and society.

In grad school, my thesis advisor asked me why ritual was so important. I’m sure I spouted off a typical academic response I neither understood nor believed. Recently, I came to understand it’s function when faced, oddly enough, with an ethical question. The question revolved around gratitude. Since the availability of pen and paper, expressing gratitude in writing to those who invested in our future and happiness has been customary. In more recent times, the thank you card serves this function.

But it’s just a card. Once you read it, you throw it away. Why send it? I thought this way once too. My mother, gracious as she was, never emphasized thank you cards. She was a vigilant force when it came to birthday cards and Christmas cards but was less vigilant about thank you notes. It wasn’t until college that I met women who consistently showed this trait.

After my wedding, I sent the customary thank you’s and then again after my baby shower. I never inquired about their importance or timing. Only recently, when a young mother, for whom we were throwing a baby shower, told us she didn’t want to feel obligated to send them because stamps were expensive, did I begin to question the practice. She had a valid argument, but something didn’t sit well. When she asked for a blanket thank you to be sent out by those who threw the event, that sparked something in me. I needed to understand why I felt it was ethically wrong.

I sought the truth by asking everyone I knew for their thoughts, then did some research of my own. Here is the conclusion. We don’t send thank you cards because we think people will keep and cherish the card itself. It’s about the ritual, not the paper. The gesture, not the card.

Whether we know it or not, the accepted way of showing gratitude is through expressing it in writing on paper that we know someone will throw away soon after reading. It’s the personal, individual acknowledgement of their act of love toward us. To collectivize our gratitude diminishes the individual’s actions. This violates the social contract we all silently consent to by being born and raised in our society.

As to when it’s appropriate… We rarely send thank you’s after Christmas or Valentine’s Day. Why? As far as I can reason, it’s because we are all giving and receiving gifts. There is no individual focus like with birthdays, weddings, or showers. In the latter case, people give gifts to a couple or individual specifically celebrating an event in that person’s life. They are the singular focus of the event and should return that care and attention with appropriate expressions of gratitude to each person who gave a gift or invested their time.

So why is it important for mothers to teach their children these silly rituals? As I said above, that has been the understood role of women in society. Mothers teach their children, and older women teach and hold accountable the younger. This structure serves the purpose of keeping the social contract intact. All it takes is one generation of mothers to not pass on a ritual for it to disappear.

So why is gratitude important? If we lose it, we risk forgetting that our lives are not built alone. Many people come into our lives to help lay the stones that become the foundation of our lives. We never succeed alone, but with the care and support of our community.