At birthday parties across the United States, we place candles on cakes to celebrate another year of someone’s life. We sing a familiar song, encourage the person celebrating to make a wish, and watch as they blow out the candles.
Of course, the candles don’t actually make someone a year older, and blowing them out doesn’t magically grant wishes.
Yet we continue this tradition, passing it from one generation to the next. We celebrate birthdays with candles even when we don’t believe they possess any special powers.
Why?
Perhaps because we’re not really celebrating the candles or expecting our wishes to come true. We’re celebrating another year of someone’s life, sharing a moment with people we care about, and giving that moment a special significance.
The actions themselves might seem unnecessary, but the experiences they create can be deeply meaningful.
In a 2023 study, sociologist Jacqui Frost examined how members of a secular community called Sunday Assembly created meaningful rituals without religious beliefs. She found that participants adapted familiar religious practices and developed new rituals through experimentation, drawing on scientific ideas and shared human experiences.1
Their experiences suggest that rituals don’t necessarily need supernatural beliefs to hold genuine meaning.
A ritual doesn’t have to change the universe to change how we experience our place within it.
What Makes Something a Ritual?
A ritual is a structured, often repeated activity that carries symbolic meaning. Just like with birthday wishes, a ritual can be meaningful even when its actions don’t directly produce the outcome they’re intended to bring about.
In a 2018 research review, psychologist Nicholas Hobson and his colleagues identified three core features that help distinguish rituals from ordinary activities.2
Structured Actions
Rituals often follow a specific set of steps performed in a particular order. These actions may be repeated in much the same way each time, with established rules about how they should be performed.
Symbolic Meaning
Rituals represent something meaningful to the people performing them. They may express respect, preserve traditions, reinforce community bonds, or reflect personal and spiritual values.
Meaning Over Function
Many rituals include actions that do not directly produce their intended results. These steps may seem unnecessary from a practical point of view, but they can hold significance because of what they represent.
Think back to our birthday candles. Blowing them out doesn’t grant wishes, but the tradition still offers an opportunity to celebrate someone and share a meaningful experience.
According to Hobson and his colleagues, rituals contain all three characteristics, although some may emphasize certain features more than others.
Why Do Humans Create Rituals?
Throughout history, people have created rituals to mark important moments, cope with uncertainty, celebrate accomplishments, and strengthen relationships.
But why do these traditions matter so much to us?
Hobson and his colleagues explored this question. They proposed that rituals serve three major functions: helping us manage our emotions, prepare for important tasks, and connect with others.
Managing Our Emotions
When life feels uncertain, rituals can offer a sense of familiarity and order.
Think about someone lighting a candle in memory of a loved one, following a familiar routine before a stressful event, or gathering with family during a difficult time.
Though these actions may not change the situation itself, they may change how we experience it.
Researchers have found that anxiety can sometimes lead people to engage in more ritualistic behavior. The familiar steps of a ritual may help focus our attention, while its personal meaning may provide comfort or a sense of control.
Rituals don’t always reduce anxiety or grief, but they can offer a meaningful way to respond to those experiences.
Preparing for Important Moments
Athletes sometimes follow the same routine before a competition, while performers might have a particular tradition before stepping on stage.
These routines can help people prepare for important moments.
Following familiar steps may help us focus our attention, feel more prepared, or approach a challenging situation with greater confidence.
More research needs to be done about whether these effects reliably improve performance. But rituals can provide a sense of preparation and confidence, even when the actions themselves don’t directly influence the outcome.
Bringing People Together
Some of the most meaningful rituals are the ones we share. Birthdays, weddings, holidays, memorials, and community celebrations bring people together through familiar traditions.
When people sing, dance, celebrate, or take part in shared activities, they may experience a stronger sense of connection and belonging. Sociologists describe the powerful feeling of shared emotion that can arise during group activities as collective effervescence.
These experiences can remind us that we’re part of a community, connected to people who share our traditions, values, or experiences.
The Other Side of Rituals
Rituals aren’t always beneficial. The same traditions that bring people together can also create division. Shared rituals may strengthen loyalty within a group while making outsiders feel unwelcome or excluded.
Rituals can also become sources of pressure when people are expected to participate in traditions that conflict with their personal values.
This reminds us that a ritual’s value shouldn’t be judged only by how strongly it brings people together. We should also consider whether it respects individuals and how it affects those who participate.
None of the potential benefits we’ve discussed requires supernatural beliefs. And that raises an interesting possibility: we can choose which traditions to preserve and create entirely new ones that reflect our own values.
Making Our Own Rituals
In her research on Sunday Assembly, Jacqui Frost observed that participants didn’t simply copy existing religious traditions. They experimented with new rituals, adapted familiar practices, and changed things that weren’t working.
Even when a ritual didn’t go as planned, the experience could still be meaningful. Working together to create and improve shared traditions became part of what brought the community together.
This offers an interesting possibility: We don’t have to inherit every ritual we practice. We can create new ones, preserve the parts of old traditions we value, and let go of practices that no longer serve us.
Think about something in your life that already feels important. Could you mark that occasion in a meaningful way?
Perhaps you could share a weekly meal without distractions, take an annual walk in memory of someone you loved, or write a letter to yourself at the beginning of each year.
There’s no requirement to follow an established tradition. Start with something small. If it feels meaningful, keep it. If not, try something different. Your goal is to make room for the people, experiences, and values that matter to you.
Perhaps birthday candles have been reminding us of that all along: the meaning comes from the moment we choose to celebrate.
References
- Frost, J. (2023). Ritualizing nonreligion: Cultivating rational rituals in secular spaces. Social Forces, 101(4), 2013–2033. https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soac042 ↩︎
- Hobson, N. M., Schroeder, J., Risen, J. L., Xygalatas, D., & Inzlicht, M. (2018). The psychology of rituals: An integrative review and process-based framework. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 22(3), 260–284. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868317734944 ↩︎