When Ritual Fails

THE PURPOSE OF RITUAL IN OUR LIVES – We are about to enter one of the most ritualized times of the year, Christmas. Take a moment and rejoice and give thanks for some of your family rituals. Let me name a few. Christmas Eve services, holding your candle high during the singing of Silent Night, Christmas Eve family dinner, reading the Christmas story – or any Christmas story for that matter, waiting for Christmas morning – or opening just one present on Christmas Eve in the hopes that the one will lead to many more before bed, ham or turkey or, in one case I know of, even lasagna on Christmas morning, certain ornaments only hung by certain people, the Prange’s box! Oh the list goes on and one. Some of them would make no sense outside of your family, but inside, even the mention of the key word brings back a flood of memories.


Some traditions/rituals seem rather odd to us. It appears that before Santa, the Christmas goat delivered the presents. This goat was apparently a rather angry and grumpy creature who just threw the gifts through the door.

There was no ritual on that first Christmas other than the ritual of childbirth. No Silent Night, no candlelight service, only the light needed to deliver a baby in a less than sterile environment. Ritual is important though. It has a way of telling us what to do when the meaning of the event is so great that we are held motionless in its majesty. Ritual tells us to eat or drink, to stand or sit or even kneel, it tells us to sing and to pray, it reminds us that the perfect gift to give is a gift of ourselves.

There are many rituals which we are clueless about. Why do we raise our candles on Christmas Eve? Are we symbolizing we are the light of the world? The Scripture clearly tells us that Christ is the light of the world. Wouldn’t it make more sense to blow ours out that his may contrast our darkness? Probably not – it just doesn’t seem right, does it? Are we trying to show forth the light of Christ alive in us? That sounds like the best answer.

And all the other things we do, most of them have no basis in what happened on the first night. It probably wasn’t silent and, probably, no one slept very soundly. But, like we said earlier, the main purpose of ritual is to explain a reality which we cannot comprehend. God born in a barn is beyond the ability of our mind to grasp, so we pack in all the rituals we can think of in the hope that we can bring the event to life in our own hearts this season again. It’s what we call “Having the Christmas Spirit.”

We must be careful with our rituals. We must be careful because rituals are powerful things. They can transform themselves from symbolizing the thing we worship into actually becoming the thing we worship. But, rituals also ground us. They bring the eternal into our lives at times when we need it most. The 23rd Psalm may seem so trite until we try to get through a crisis in our life without hearing the comfort of it read for us or to us. The Christmas tree may seem an unnecessary addition to the holiday season until our parents talk about not putting one up this season any more. For all their failings, we need rituals to express who we are and where we stand on the eternal stage of this creation. It is comforting to know that some things never change. So, this season we will light our candles, we will put up our trees, we will unpack our nativity scenes, and, in doing so, we hope to touch a small piece of the eternal.

Pastor Craig