Cultures and Rituals

 I was reading an article when I came across this topic.

There are many cultures throughout the world. With different cultures come different traditions and rituals. These rituals can be seen as practical and helpful, but they can also be weird and painful to others.

For example, the Malagasy people of Madagascar celebrate Famadihana, a funerary tradition where the Malagasy people bring the bodies of their ancestors out of their crypts or dig them out of their graves and wrap them in new cloth. Families then carry the bodies through the streets and dance with them with live music. Famadihana might be a ritual that revolves around the dead, but it is actually as a joyful family gathering. The Madagascar people believed that the dead only completely joined the spirit world of their ancestors when their bodies decomposed completely. Since some bodies were not completely decomposed, they were believed to still be with the living. Some people might think this is weird or unsanitary because of the number of dead bodies everyone is being exposed to, but the Malagasy people considered this auspicious.

Another ritual is the shrine of the Nacirema. The shrine "is a box or chest" that contains "many charms and magical potions without which no native believes he could live." The Nacirema people also seek out the holy-mouth-man every year so he can perform an exorcism in their mouths to get rid of the evil. He enlarges holes into teeth and fills those holes up with magical materials. This ritual is done to keep teeth from falling out, prevent gums from bleeding, not having their friends desert them, and not being rejected by lovers. This does sound like a very painful tradition, but when you read the piece Body Ritual Among the Nacirema by Horace Miner, you realize that the shrine is actually a medicine cabinet and the holy-mouth-man is actually a dentist.

Even though some rituals seem out of the ordinary or weird, they hold a significant meaning to other people around the world.