Issue207【StruggleToTriumph】by Chan 2011.1.1

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ISSUE 207

“Rituals and ceremonies help define a culture. Without them, societies or groups of people have a diminished sense of who they are.”

I fundamentally agree with the speaker's claim for the very reason the most rituals and ceremonies are essentially culture in miniature. As we all know, rituals and ceremonies are activities people performed to maintain their faith and belief or to celebrate for their harvest since many years ago. People carry out ceremonies at the time they think they will never forget, such as birth, death, marriage and blessing. By attending rituals and ceremonies, we human beings identify who we are and gain and sense of belonging.

Firstly, rituals and ceremonies are born to define a culture. people get together and perform rituals and ceremonies with the same faith, they meeting, blessing, or celebrating to write the special time down. For example, when a mother gave birth to a baby, people in the community will perform a ceremony to give the baby a name and pray for him or her. And when someone died, people in the community will also perform a ceremony to sum up his or her achievements and success in lifetime and express their miss and affection for the people who has left forever. Thus a culture emerges or be maintained and succeed.

Secondly, rituals and ceremonies are also benefit to politics, education, and social stability. Every country has many rituals and ceremonies for itself, such as inauguration of the president, parliament and Independence Day. Education is a collection of numerous rituals, there are varieties of ceremonies in schools to strengthen education and enhance students′love for their country, for example, opening ceremony, flag-raising ceremony, adult ceremony and so on. Furthermore, many rituals and ceremonies such as go to church, rogation, and ceremonies in festivals are essential for social stability, people can communicate with each other for exchanging experience and express their frame of mind despite happiness and unhappiness. Thus, rituals and ceremonies are substantive in many fields, for example, politics, education, and social stability and so on.

However, rituals and ceremonies carried out by people who have evil idea will be destructions to society. A example well known is the gathering of Taliban, terrorists plan cruel attacks at their ceremonies, bring big loss for society and making so many people to be homeless.

To sum up, as shown above, traditional rituals and ceremonies are generally benefit for a culture, we can get sense of belonging from them. Nevertheless, rituals and ceremonies with evil idea will be destructions to society.