7.1: Commemorations, Festivals, Holidays

Some rituals are used to commemorate certain important historical event in the life of a particular religious tradition. For example, when Hindus light lamps during the festival of Diwali, they commemorate the triumphant return of Rama, and their lamps serve to guide him back from exile to the city of Ayodhya. In Judaism, Jews commemorate the liberation of their ancestors from Egypt annually by eating the Passover meal. Regarding Islam, during the pilgrimage in Makkah (Mecca), Muslims commemorate several important historical events, such as those that took place in the lives of Hagar, Ishmael, and Ibrahim (Abraham). Moving to Christianity, when Christians meet on Christmas eve or Christmas morning, it is customary to tell, or read from scripture, the story of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Many commemorations become festivals within the tradition of the religion, such as Christmas and Easter in Christianity. Of interest, as a religion grows and becomes more influential, these festival, though religious in nature and origin, can become secular holidays and are even celebrated by people who are not a member of that specific faith.

Historical commemorations, including those mentioned above, can also be secular in nature. For example, the Fourth of July is celebrated as Independence Day in America, and almost every city or town has a fireworks display that evening. This is an attempt to recreate, as well as a symbolic representation, of the cannon fire, noise, and explosions of the many battles during the Revolutionary War. Historical commemorations, both religious and secular, allow participants to recreate and relive important events in their history. Examples of seasonal rituals above include Passover and Easter. Seasonal rituals connect the participants to their premodern past, in the time when early members of that faith or country lived. These are connected with agriculture, and, like historical commemorations, can be secular, such as Thanksgiving in America, which occurs after the fall harvests, and food is abundant.

Case Study: Passover, the Seder Meal, Easter, Communion

Many are familiar with the story Moses being called by God through the burning bush to go to Egypt and free the enslaved Hebrews. The Pharaoh of Egypt refuses to release them, so a series of nine plagues punish Egypt: swarms of frogs, lice, insects, livestock dying, and others. With each visit Moses makes to Pharaoh, he requests to free the Hebrews, only to be rejected time and again. The last and climatic plague is the death of the firstborn males of Egypt in one night, "You shall tell Pharaoh, ‘Yahweh says, Israel is my son, my firstborn, and I have said to you, “Let my son go, that he may serve me;” and you have refused to let him go. Behold, I will kill your firstborn son.’” (Exodus 4: 22-23). In it, the angel of death passes over Egypt at midnight, slaying every Egyptian firstborn male. Moses had earlier ordered the Hebrews to perform a ritual that will protect them from the slaughter. The ritual consists of two parts. Each family is told to sacrifice a lamb. The lamb will then be eaten as a family meal, and its blood will be smeared on the door posts to mark the house, "They shall take some of the blood, and put it on the two door posts and on the lintel, on the houses in which they shall eat it. They shall eat the meat in that night, roasted with fire, with unleavened bread. They shall eat it with bitter herbs..." (Exodus 12: 6-8). This was done so the angel of death knows to pass over that house; this is how the name Passover came about. (The term passover works in Hebrew and in English as above but not all languages.) In addition, each family is to eat unleavened bread. So according to Exodus, this Passover ritual was established on Israel’s last night of slavery while the angel of death passed over the dwellings that were marked with blood.

Illustration of smearing the door posts

The above connects to preexisting springtime ritual practices. One would be characteristic of when the Hebrew people were nomads: the sacrifice of the first lamb born in the spring to God in order to procure favor and continued blessing on the flocks for the spring. The other would be characteristic of agriculture: it would be an offering of the very first barley that would be harvested in the spring. It would be quickly ground into flour and used before it even has time to ferment, to quickly offer something to God to procure favor for the rest of the crop. These rituals are associated now with events in the life of the new nation of Israel, rather than being grounded in the cycles of nature. The blood of the sacrificial lamb protected the Hebrews from the angel of death, and the bread now is said to have been eaten, consumed in unleavened form because the Hebrews left Egypt in such a hurry. They had no time to allow the dough to rise. So the ritual of Passover itself carries deep symbolism of the Hebrews before they were enslaved in Egypt.

That original Passover meal is kept alive today with the Seder Meal, a ritual performed by a community or by multiple generations of a family, involving a retelling of the story of the liberation of the Hebrews from slavery in ancient Egypt. This story is in the Book of Exodus in the Hebrew Bible. The Seder itself is based on the Biblical verse commanding Jews to retell the story of the Exodus from Egypt: "You shall tell your child on that day, saying, 'It is because of what the LORD did for me when I came out of Egypt.'" (Exodus 13:8) Traditionally, families and friends gather in the evening to read from scripture containing the narrative of the Israelite exodus from Egypt, recite special blessings, and sing special Passover songs.

The Seder Meal

The Passover Seder Meal is performed in much the same way by Jews all over the world and contains six symbolic foods, each of which has special significance to the retelling of the story of the Exodus from Egypt. Thus, the participants recognize and recreate the experience themselves. The six items on the Seder plate include bitter herbs, symbolizing the bitterness and harshness of the slavery which the Jews endured in Ancient Egypt. Charoset, a sweet, brown, pebbly paste of fruits and nuts, represents the mortar used by the Jewish slaves to build the storehouses of Egypt. A vegetable other than bitter herbs, usually parsley but sometimes something such as celery or cooked potato is dipped into salt water or vinegar. A roasted lamb or goat bone, symbolizing the Passover sacrifice is also on the plate along with a hard-boiled egg, symbolizing the festival sacrifice offered in the Temple in Jerusalem and was then eaten as part of the meal on Seder night.

A loaf of bread and a chalice of wine

Moving from the time to Moses through many years, we reach the first century CE. Passover has grown to become a major Jewish festival, and thousands of people would go to Jerusalem to celebrate it, have the Seder Meal, and worship at the temple. Around the year 30 CE, among the thousands of Jewish people in Jerusalem to celebrate Passover was Jesus of Nazareth and his twelve disciples; they also were to have their own Passover meal, but Jesus changed the ritual, and in doing so establishes another, "As they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had blessed it, he broke it and gave to them, and said, 'Take, eat. This is my body.' He took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave to them. They all drank of it. He said to them, “This is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many'" (Mark 14: 22-23). Notice the word covenant, which we covered in the previous chapter.

Receiving communion

This meal is known as the Last Supper and is the root of the Christian ritual of communion. When Christians celebrate communion, the bread is used to represent the body of Jesus and the wine his blood. Thus, the participants are entering into a covenant with God through the ritual of communion, which is a recreation of the Last Supper, which was a celebration of the Passover meal, which was instituted to escape the plague of the death of the firstborns.

Reflecting upon the definition of the term ritual, we can see the above case study is rich in depth, symbolism, and meaning. It is much more than a routine and is a strong example of why rituals are performed: to express abstract concepts, to build community, and to help the participant gain a full sense of being in a right relationship with the Ultimate, the Holy.

Transformative Rituals are a unique type of ritual in that the participant is changed by the Ultimate, the Holy during the ritual. A good example of a transformative ritual is baptism in Christianity. The word baptism is from the Greek noun baptisma, meaning "washing". In some denominations, baptism is also called christening, but for others the word "christening" is reserved for the baptism of infants. As with communion above, baptism has its roots in Judaism, where it was a ritual washing but not a transformative ritual. Baptism is a ritual of admission and adoption, with the use of water, into the Christian Church generally. The Gospels report that Jesus of Nazareth was baptized by his cousin, John the Baptist.

Early Christian painting of a baptism

The usual form of baptism among the earliest Christians was for the candidate to be immersed, either totally submerged under the water or partially, standing or kneeling in water while water was poured on him or her. While John the Baptist's use of a deep river for his baptism suggests immersion, pictorial and archaeological evidence of Christian baptism from the 3rd century onward indicates a normal form was to have the candidate stand in water while water was poured over the upper body. Other common forms of baptism now in use include pouring water three times on the forehead, a method called affusion.

Baptism in Russian Orthodox Church

Even though the many Christian denominations perform it differently, including age of the individual and practice, baptism is recognized as a need-ed ritual. Some denominations perform infant baptism by sprinkling or poring water over the forehead, while others fully immerse an adult. Regardless, for Christians the participant is changed through baptism; within the ritual, one experiences rebirth into Christ, as well as a washing away of sin. Christians believe baptism cleanses one from sin and truly changes the state of the person from an alien to a citizen of God's kingdom, and that baptism is not a human work; it is the place where God does the work that only God can do.