Word: ritualizes
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...schools will shop for their under things at the very cheapest department stores in order to declare their independence from the accepted norms. Some will wear "Daddy's discards"--stretched out and sufficiently worn hand-me-down underwear. This will replace the traditional passing-on-of-the-tweed-jacket ritual. Less-wealthy students, on the other hand, will spend inordinate amounts of cash on top-of-the-line underwear in an effort to secure their class position...
...fighters screamed overhead in tribute, the family was receiving mourners by the thousands. Among them, observed Amin, the man who aims to succeed his brother, were representatives of most of the country's factions, adversaries and even blood enemies, bound together for an hour or two in a ritual of mourning. But then it was over, and so, it seemed, was the fleeting moment of unity. ?By William E. Smith...
...perhaps the most enduring ritual in revolutionary Iran: the late-night summons, the slow walk along bleak prison corridors, and finally the waiting firing squad. Last week the executioners' guns took aim, on the specific orders of the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, at one of the founding figures of the Islamic revolution that swept away Shah Reza Pahlavi in February 1979: Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, 46, the man who sprang to international prominence as Iran's Foreign Minister during the U.S. hostage crisis. Ghotbzadeh was shot after a 26-day trial in which he was accused by the Islamic military prosecutor...
...course, one can always try the American approach and pretend to ignore the past entirely. Jews have generally taken the opposite tack: to yank the past into the present so forcibly that time has virtually no demarcations. Part of the Passover ritual is the exhortation that everyone in each generation feel he personally has just gone out of Egypt. The presentness of death is a central element of Judaism. The various prayers of lamentation, the practice of shivah (the seven-day period of mourning), the published announcements of grief, all lie at the heart of a faith that looks solely...
Whereas in the last 30 years a British Government's capitulation to organized labor's demands after a brief strike had become almost a ritual, the Iron Lady has begun to test the unions' mettle. The unions might have been running the show in the past, but no more Thatcher defused each strike this summer just by standing her ground...