What do you do regularly as a matter of ritual rather than practicality or necessity?

This doesn’t necessarily mean bonfires and incantations or incense and photographs. They might be tiny things that nobody but you notices or cares about. But you do them for reasons of your own and not because there’s any practical purpose behind them.

For example, you might have a set procedure for making your coffee, and I wouldn’t call that a ritual. A good, solid habit spares us from having to solve the same practical problems again and again. It also helps us make sure we don’t miss any steps.

A ritual, though, has some symbolic or spiritual component. It points to something beyond the act itself. If I light a candle in my window every night when it gets dark, it’s not because I need it to see.