Rituals

After writing the rituals assignment for class, I wanted to compare rituals from all over the world. Since I wrote about my family Christmas ritual, I will start with that, comparing it to the Muslim holiday Ramadan. Christmas, for many is about family, togetherness, gift giving, and the sharing of a feast. Ramadan is 30 days long and is primarily about fasting and prayer. This is far different than the indulging Christmas holiday.

Marriage and weddings are another major ritual in the U.S. Typically you start dating someone, fall in love, ask for their hand in marriage, and hope she has a wealthy father to pay for the traditional, extravagant wedding. The Kreung tribe, located in Cambodia does marriage a lot differently. When a girl reaches her mid teens her parents build a love hut. The girl stays with different boys in the hut each night, until she finds the right one. This would clearly raise red flags if parents did this with their daughters here, but since divorce does not exist in Kreung its important to find the right one.

For some cultures the initiation of a boy becoming a man is a big deal. In the Jewish religion, at 13  boys have their Bar Mitzvah and reads the Torah aloud to become a man. In some southern African tribes boys are taken into the wilderness to fend for themselves for a period of time to learn how to be a man. Then there are the Vanuatu Land divers, who have to bungee jump roughly 70 feet with an aim to hit the ground to prove their toughness and manhood.

I found it very interesting comparing some of our common rituals to other culture's. Different religions, values, and ideals all help form these differences between cultures.