Many situations demanding politeness – routine greetings and inquiries about health and welfare – are ritualized, but ritualized without our sensing that it is ritual with a capital R. The big R attaches to formal events that mark major life-cycle changes – as in Bar and Bat Mitzvahs and other initiation rites, communions, weddings, funerals, graduations – or to occasions of paying public homage that often require singing or reciting in unison, as in the national anthem or prayer services. Big R ritual seems to involve something that we can call, if we do not fear being struck down by some offended power, hocus-pocus; it is distinguished from the small rituals of daily life by a sacred separation.

The expression “hocus-pocus,” being mock Latin, also raises another aspect of Ritual. It is often carried out in a language we don't quite understand, as when I pray in Hebrew or Catholics used to pray in Latin, or when Protestants recently used the King James Bible, or when kids have not a clue as to what the words are or mean, though in English, when they sing Christmas carols or the national anthem or say the pledge of allegiance. What of the “forgive us our trespasses” of the Lord's prayer, where it was understood that cutting across Mrs. Keappock's lawn ranked right up there with murder in what got God really mad. What eight-year-old knew what “plejallegiance” was or why one nation was “invisible”?