When the shelter-in-place orders came down in California, the first thing I thought of was my cousin’s wedding—the one I was supposed to officiate. I’d been working on creating a special ceremony since the fall. But once the pandemic kicked in, everything was canceled.
Perhaps my cousin is luckier than some—after all, a wedding can be rescheduled. Even so, he had to let go of a cherished dream of when and how his wedding would take place.
He’s certainly not alone. Many people have had to give up important shared rituals—graduation ceremonies, prom nights, long-awaited concerts, religious services, opening-day baseball, and even funerals. The loss, while necessary, is profound.
What can we do to cope? Is there something we can learn from this experience that will help us carry on? What will it mean for the future of our social fabric?
Why We Have Shared Rituals
Shared rituals play an important role in our psyches, according to social psychologist Shira Gabriel. Her research suggests that rituals—choreographed events that produce an emotionally laden experience—create a feeling of unity and sacredness that bonds us together with others.“Rituals give us a feeling of going beyond the ordinary—of having a moment that transcends that, turning events into something special and meaningful,” says Gabriel.
Why transcendent? Because when we participate in ritual, we experience a sort of emotion contagion that sociologist Émile Durkheim called “collective effervescence.” That uplift and energy increase our sense of commonality (even with strangers) and make us feel we are part of a larger community. It’s why we can feel so bonded to fellow Golden State Warriors fans at a game or so unified during a protest march.
Gabriel says that we often create shared rituals when we go through important life transitions, too, because they mark the passage of time as sacred. Weddings, funerals, and graduations, for example, all give us a sense of meaning, which makes forgoing them so hard.
“There’s no doubt that people are going to grieve and are going to feel sad about the loss of what they had planned,” she says.
He wonders if the same might happen with the COVID-19 outbreak, especially given the need for “social distancing.” A big event involving the whole country—and, in fact, the whole world—will make “everybody focus on the same thing and feel the same emotions,” which creates a sense of solidarity. At the same time, however, we lose face-to-face interaction with other people. Can email, phone conversations, and video conference meetings make up for that loss?
“I would say the evidence is sort of a yes, but to a weaker degree,” says Collins.
Creating More Collective Effervescence Now
It’s good to know that losing shared rituals isn’t dire. That doesn’t mean giving them up is easy.“People need to be able to talk about what they’re experiencing, because these are real losses,” she says. “We’re not here to rank each other’s losses in terms of which one is more valid or which one is more significant.”
She points to her own losses from the COVID-19 outbreak—her teen son will miss his last semester of eighth grade, and she can’t hold a funeral after her father’s death or sit shiva for him (a Jewish tradition that helps the bereaved honor the passing of their loved ones). Dismissing those losses or not accepting our feelings of loss is not the answer.
“As parents, partners, family members, and friends, we need to allow people to talk about the things that they’re missing,” she says.
How to Make New Rituals
Sheltering in place could also inspire people to create alternative events to mark special occasions, she says, such as a video-conference dance party to celebrate a graduation, which may even end up being more memorable than what was originally planned.- Ask people to bring to their online gathering something symbolic to share, like a candle to light, a memory or story, a picture, or a poem. Getting people to contribute in that way can help create a sense of oneness.
- Mark the moment by having someone provide an opening statement that designates the beginning of any ritual and explains the purpose of being there. That sets the tone and makes people realize that this is a special moment in time and not just another online meeting.
- Create emotional highs, perhaps using music, dancing, poetry, moments of silence, or something else with high emotional resonance to augment the experience.
- Always have a distinct ending that includes an emotional peak, because people tend to remember an event better that way.
“If you can design a ritual to be meaningful—so that it actually touches your heart or brings someone to mind or gives you a sense of your own purpose—all the better,” she says.
Gabriel encourages people to also look beyond formalized rituals to everyday opportunities to share positive emotion and a sense of solidarity from a distance.
She points to examples from her own neighborhood, where people are putting up rainbows in their windows, drawing pictures on the sidewalk for others to see when they walk by, or leaving notes for one another on the ends of driveways. She mentions widely shared online videos showing people singing from their balconies, cheering in appreciation of health care workers, or creating drive-by birthday parades.
“People are drawn to collective rituals like these for a reason—we want to feel connected to other people and to feel a sensation of sacredness,” she says. “These kinds of events should bring on those same sorts of feelings.”
Once the shelter-in-place orders have been lifted, though, Gabriel hopes we’ll gain a renewed appreciation for shared rituals.
“Hopefully, we’ll go back to them and we’ll value them even more than we do now,” she says. “And, maybe we’ll have learned some new tricks along the way, some new ways to connect to other people that we didn’t have before.”