Rituals

 RHYS BOWEN:  Aren’t we humans funny? We seem to love rituals, don’t we? We spend time doing things in ways that are not time-saving or efficient for the sake of the ritual alone. Take my husband, John. He is in charge of the tea making at our house. Woe betide anyone else who tries to make the tea because they will fail, miserably.

The tea making starts with John blending his own tea. He buys an expensive Darjeeling online that comes from God knows where. He mixes this with a little Ceylon, a fine leafed Indian tea, from the Indian spice shop AND some Keemun–a smoky China tea that he says gives the blend a little oomph.  

This tea mix sits in a caddy with its own spoon. In the mornings he boils the water in the electric kettle and while he does this he warms the pot. Then he takes a special infuser, puts the tea leaves into it and pours on the boiling water.  Then he sets the timer for three minutes, after which the infuser must be removed immediately.

As you can imagine this all takes time. I would quite happily pop a tea bag into a cup that had been in the microwave, but no–we have to have the tea ceremony every morning.

I suppose I’m conscious of this ritual because it is the time of year for rituals, isn’t it? We light the candles, one by one, on the menorah. We put out milk and cookies for Santa. We hang stockings by the fireplace. We spin the dreidel or play games we only play at Christmas. We open presents in a set order. We eat the same foods. And they are all important to remind us that this is a special time of year.

In our house the rituals start with decorating the tree, the first Sunday of December. I have to have on my favorite Christmas CD (Mannheim Steamroller) and make mulled wine while we do it. And the rest of the ornaments (my little snow village, the German wooden people etc) have to go in exactly the same place as last year. 

I am expected by the family to make the mince pies and sausage rolls that my mother made at Christmas and her mother before her.

So I wonder why we feel the need to bring ritual into our lives. I can understand the ancient Druids or Greeks having special ceremonies to remind the ignorant population that it was now Winter Solstice or Midsummer’s Night. But we seem to have a need to reassure ourselves with a repetition of what we’ve always done and what our parents did before us.

Think of Thanksgiving in America. Every year the same foods, even though we don’t actually like green bean casserole. I remember one year it was just John, Dominic and me for Thanksgiving. I decided it was stupid to get a turkey for three of us and as a treat i bought fresh crab. Dominic, still in his teens at that time, sat at the table and stared at the crab. “What’s this?’ he asked. And then, “Where’s the turkey?”  He was horrified that we were deviating from the script.

So I’m interested to hear what holiday rituals you have in your house? Do you ever try something quite different? Do you have a yearning to go to an expensive hotel for the holiday and let someone else do the cooking?