Religious Holidays and Rituals
What are Holidays and Rituals?
|
||
|
||
|
||
Holidays can serve to form a connection to your own past by evoking memories of past celebration. Holidays can form and reinforce connections with the friends and family with whom you celebrate. Holiday events can also create connections across an entire society as people develop parallel experiences which forge subtle bonds.
Rituals and celebrations, as long as they are not empty of personal meaning, can be worth preserving. Rituals are not inherently irrational, as some may allege, but they can be irrational if they are simply followed for the sake of tradition, or because that is what is expected of you, etc. For rituals to be rational, they must be consciously chosen as a means to achieve some goal, such as those suggested above.
Rituals can be important because they are often important means of social communication. We cannot, after all, observe relationships - what we observe is people's behavior towards one another. Very often, that behavior takes place in the context of "ritual" acts - behaviors which may not have obvious functional utility but which do nevertheless reinforce the ways people relate to one another.
Thus, it is often accurate to say that ritual is a type of behavior which "says things" rather than "does things." Sometimes what is said can be negative, for example rituals which serve to reinforce a person's status as someone subordinate when they should really be equal. Often, however, what is said can be quite positive because it lets others know that you continue to care about them.
So yes, holiday celebrations and ritual events can have importance and value quite independent of whatever religious significance they may also carry for others. The question which then faces the person who rejects such religious significance is: do I participate in any fashion in any of these events? And if so, how? Why?
An interesting thing to consider is how the religious meanings behind religious holidays can change over time. One of the primary ways evolution works is through older systems adopting newer functions. Thus, bones which were once part of the jaw now serve to allow us to hear. Evolution like this can take place on a societal level, too, for example by helping along the transformation of Christmas away from simply a celebration by Christians of the birth of their god and towards a holiday for all people to celebrate a wide variety of things like family, community and love.
In the end, a person's response to religious holidays must be wholly individual and personal - and it will often depend upon the holiday in question. No one answer can exist for all people and no one answer can fit all events.
-->
