Criteria for Ritual

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So. I found a neat piece of Margaret Mead stuff on Ritual:

She says that part of what makes a repeated action Ritual instead of Habbit is the fact that there's a sharing/communication/relationship going on. Whether between the human and a particular deity/spritit/what-have-you or between multiple humans who are sharing something together AND it's that sharing, and the antisipation there-of, that makes the event/action a Ritual.

I like it. :-)

I think it was Durkheim (though I could be wrong -- I'll have to check my notes) who said that rituals happen at specific times, whether that time is a particular time of day or a particular time of year, or a particular time of life, to be a ritual, it has to have a specific time when it's supposed to happen.

So... To combine those two definitions (or criteria, I suppose):

Having dinner when you can, with however many family members are available, is not a ritual.

Having dinner, at six o'clock sharp, with everybody present, no matter what: That's a ritual.

Does that make sense? :-)