Social Practices, Rituals, and Festive Events.

Social practices, rituals and festive events are habitual activities that structure the lives of communities and groups and that are shared by and relevant to many of their members. They reaffirm the identity of those who practise them as a group or a society. Performed in public or private, they are closely linked to important events. Social, ritual and festive practices may help to mark the passing of the seasons, events in the calendar or the stages of a person’s life. They vary from small gatherings to large-scale social celebrations and commemorations. Social practices, rituals and festive events involve a dazzling variety of forms: birth, wedding and funeral rituals; traditional games and sports; settlement patterns; food traditions like the Newfoundland Jiggs Dinner; seasonal ceremonies like mummering , garden parties and Christmas traditions.