All our best rituals are a kind of performance about what we need or want most. Sometimes they are so on the nose they barely qualify as art—for example, a kiss at the end of a ceremony to signify the sealing of the union. Sometimes the traditions are so open to interpretation that they mean something different to each of us. And sometimes the origins of the tradition are so old and so popular that we abide by them despite not understanding what they really mean. Throwing rice at the newlyweds after the ceremony was once a fertility rite, a way of trying to harness some good luck in conceiving
...more
