ritual

Quinceañeras mark the crossing from childhood into something new, a moment wrapped in family pride and ritual.

You can see it in the little rituals: call my mom before any major event — New Year’s Eve, the Super Bowl, or just a random December day that feels festive — and ask what she’s making.

Grief, too, steers us, a cleansing ritual, as I recall each time my wife and I meander beneath Green-Wood’s leafy canopy, parakeets swooping and chattering overhead, or sit quietly in its hushed chapel.

Its roots lie in the medieval stonemasons' guilds, and members still meet in "lodges" to carry out secretive initiation rituals and ceremonies based on allegories such as the building of King Solomon's Temple.

Any fan with a sacred good luck ritual and any player who’s thanked the man upstairs for a touchdown knows the two overlap as tightly as a freshly laced pigskin.