Why Rituals Make Meals Unforgettable

This past week was Chinese New Year. The buffet was cramped with dumplings, fish, and indescribable things -- each dish with a story going back to dinosaur days in China.

Last night, some non-Asian friends crowded into our dining room for the adventure. After blessings, a PowerPoint-style walkthrough of the food, impromptu musical interludes, and some light stretching, we finally ate.

My daughter’s college friend leaned over and whispered, “I love all this ritual stuff.”

I’ve been thinking about that for twenty-four hours. And I realized—I do too.

Most dinners -- even Iron Chef-level spread-a-gonzas -- fade from memory pretty quickly. Ritual dinners don’t. It isn’t about the food; it’s about the framework, the repeated gestures that mark time, make meaning.

I’ve been lucky to sit at many Jewish Passover tables. The rituals, the conversation, the engagement—it leaves you altered in small ways. A little wiser, a little more grounded.

Anything can become ritual: birthdays, holidays, the weekly Friday night spaghetti, or Sunday lunch at Taco Bell. The trick is simple: declare it, repeat it, give it meaning. Over time, it sticks—sometimes quietly . . . under the radar, like a Soviet sleeper agent in a Netflix movie.

After fifteen years of Chinese New Year dinners—after fifteen years of never cooking, never cleaning, never arriving on time -- there was a girl who missed her sixteenth Chinese year in the US.  She was on a Rotary exchange in Argentina.

Undeterred, she cooked a Chinese New Year dinner for her host family and four friends. It would have been less surprising if she’d built a spaceship out of Lego.
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Rituals carry an undertow we rarely see. They shape us. They anchor us. And it’s never too late to start.