Notes from the North

What is a ritual? The dictionary says it is an act or a ceremony which takes place at a specific date or time and follows a prescribed form or order. It is most often carried out in a group or public setting but not always. So what might turn a repeated act into a ritual I wonder? The question occurs to me because the organisers of the Edinburgh Festival have chosen ‘Rituals that Unite Us’ as the theme for this year’s Festival. Perhaps they mean it as an indirect response to last year’s theme of ‘Where do we go from here?’     Using the dictionary definition, should we call the applause at the end of a show a ritual act? It certainly seems to unite the audience but I don’t think it merits the word ritual. Rituals are more than a practice, more than a habit. They seem to me to have a strong connection to belief, superstition, veneration, propitiation, like the ceremonial lowering of a flag, the sounding of the last post, the blessing of a new baby…    It is true that...