Next Rites
Calling forth old and new rituals to help us navigate now and next
“People often swear by the importance of rituals without being able to articulate why they're so important. In fact, rituals can help us though our anxieties and connect us with one another, regardless of our differences, anew— in times of both darkness and light." —Asha Curran, Global CEO and co-founder, Giving Tuesday
NEW YORK—One of this city’s favorite year-end rituals occurs tonight, on Thanksgiving Eve.
Every year, like clockwork—whether in rain, chill, sleet or snow—we’ll trudge faithfully, at dusk, in groups of spouses and kids [and with brownstone-dwelling neighbors from widely varied backgrounds and political leanings] up Central Park West, toward the grounds of the American Museum of Natural History. Once there, we’ll take mutual delight in watching netted rows of giant balloons—17 in all, from Snoopy to Spider-Man, Sponge Bob SquarePants and Boss Boy, Minnie Mouse, Tom Turkey and Santa—get inflated with helium to again become recognizable, and ready to float high above the street on tethered ropes during the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
These pre-parade “inflation” gatherings have been going on since 1924, convening Upper West Side dwellers at the parade’s starting line to honor the traditions of the season and take authentic pleasure in sharing and hearing each others’ takes on the year’s big hits and misses. Each year, we then part ways with good cheer and the reaffirmed knowledge that despite our differences, we’re all still here for each other as neighbors and as New Yorkers (some who met 20-plus years earlier while volunteering on 9/11)—regardless.
This year’s ritual, it is hoped, will be no different.
New Rituals Emerging
Rituals—large and small—have existed throughout history to connect people and reaffirm shared values in acts regularly repeated in a specific manner—and have become especially popular as bridge-builders in times like these, marked by political division and rapid change.
During the past decade, “many old and new rituals have emerged (or re-emerged) to accommodate people who want to recover a lost sense of community and citizenship through those experiences—without having to say they belong to a certain political party or religion,” says Dimitris Xygalatas, a professor of cognitive anthropology at the University of Connecticut and author of Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living.
The COVID pandemic made many people reconsider the importance of rituals, Xygalatas says. “When COVID hit, it was, again, one of the best lines of evidence for the importance of ritual. People turn to ritual to find social connection and soothe anxiety, so when they could no longer leave the house, they spontaneously began creating new rituals.” There were drive-through weddings, ZOOM graduation ceremonies, virtual prom dances and even church choirs asking each member to make a smartphone selfie of themselves singing a hymn at home, enabling video editors to synch those solos together into a full choir rendition to broadcast over ZOOM or Streamyard during lockdown.
“When we saw people in big cities come out on their balconies to start banging pots and pans together in a show of solidarity during lock-downs,” Xygalatas said, “it really showed that ritual is not a luxury. It is, in a way, an act of defiance against a common challenge. People will go to great lengths to preserve or create new rituals when they discover something is missing or something is needing to be rebuilt together differently.”
Giving Tuesday
One of Thanksgiving week’s most successful new national rituals, now globally acknowledged as one, is Giving Tuesday. It was founded in 2012 by two young managers of a mid-sized nonprofit in New York City on the premise that Thanksgiving—followed by Black Friday and then Cyber-Monday—should also be followed by a Giving Tuesday, a day to give charitably to others. What made it a success was a growing demand by young people at the time to use social media to rally their friends for social good—and in a way that would enable them to participate in mobilizing people behind a cause, and to raise a significant amount of small-money contributions, together, from friends and family networks previously untapped by existing nonprofits not yet up to speed digitally.
Today, many nonprofits have added Giving Tuesday to their fundraising playbooks. Giving Tuesday now operates in 100 countries and continues to be celebrated on the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving. Last year, Giving Tuesday’s one-day fundraising campaigns raised over $3.1 billion for needy causes in the United States, and since its founding, has raised more than $11 billion. This year’s Giving Tuesday falls on December 3rd.
Henry Timms, a co-founder of Giving Tuesday and co-author of New Power: says “most organizations still focus on how tech is changing but don’t focus enough on how tech is changing power. Decentralized power is now having significant influences across all fields and is creating new rituals and new movements across the board.”
What’s Next?
Bridge-building nonprofits, in the wake of the 2024 election, are creating new rituals to help groups speak across the political divides, and this holiday season, there are plenty of Giving Tuesday campaigns planned to support pro-democracy organizations across the country, “but there isn’t yet any mass political mobilization,” says Mark Brilliant, an American history professor at UC Berkeley. The focus for now is on finding new ways to build local citizen coalitions, and creating new rituals is part of that strategy, he says.
“Rituals matter now more than ever,” writes Eliot Cohen in The Atlantic, “because they answer a universal and timeless yearning for shared purpose and now, after years of divisive politics and social disruption, locate us Americans in the broad scheme of history and in a larger weave of morality. …The norms and institutions of our society and our democracy are being challenged now from within … and rituals can play a more successful role in bringing us closer together.”
So, dear readers, for now as we reflect with others this holiday season over whether our country in its 248th year as a nation might still have a chance of becoming a better, freer, fairer, finer version of itself—let’s not forget to look across this year’s holiday table to honor those with whom we celebrate Thanksgiving as those who share that vision, regardless of their political differences.
Let’s also keep honoring the inclusive rituals we all still commonly hold dear—not simply out of habit, but because of the values, strength and purpose they can help us all to rediscover and experience together, especially now—in this deeply challenging and uncertain time.
Got a ritual you’d like to share? Please do, and have a happy Thanksgiving. We’re truly grateful for your readership and our expanding New Rules community!