Just something I was thinking about today, and I’m curious if I’m an outlier, or if I’m on the same page as everybody else.
It’s a big time of the year for graduations and weddings and it got me thinking about all the ceremonies. They are often long and drawn out and VERY expensive for whoever’s paying the bill, and I can’t stand them.
Just the idea of sitting for hours while somebody I don’t know talks and talks and talks until we finally get to the “I do” or the passing of the diplomas/awards that we came to see.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the celebration. I’m more than happy to come out and congratulate you on your achievement and make some good memories with friends and family, but why can’t we just skip to that part instead of sitting through a series of lectures?
I even skipped my own college graduation because I didn’t see any point in making me and my family sit through the ceremony. They know I graduated, and I don’t need some big expensive to-do and a spotlight to validate that.
But, we keep doing them, and keep making them bigger and more elaborate than before, so it makes me wonder if people actually appreciate these ceremonies or if it’s just something we do because that’s how it’s been done.
So I feel like I might have an interesting perspective on this…
All throughout college, I saw graduation similar to how you talk about it. I basically thought I’d show up drunk with my buddies, it would take half the day, and then it’d be over. Maybe I’d actually walk, maybe not.
For context, I graduated in the Spring of 2020, right when COVID first was becoming a thing. My graduation ceremony was cancelled, and replaced by a Facebook Live stream. Same speakers and similar speeches to what had been expected, but really none of the pomp and circumstance.
Now if you would’ve asked me earlier in my college career how I would’ve felt about my graduation ceremony being cancelled, I probably would’ve just shrugged it off. But it actually happened. And I find myself feeling like there is something missing from my time at college. Like there was no real sense of closure for the 4 years I spent there, the countless late nights in the library studying for insanely difficult exams, no real send off for the friends I had in the class outside my close circle.
So I feel differently about graduations now. There’s always going to be extremes, people who take them way too far. But I see the ceremonies themselves as the way for people (friends, families, professors, etc) to show how proud they are of the accomplishments of the students. And I feel like there’s wisdom in acknowledging that the ceremony is how they are trying to express that sentiment to you, and receiving it as intended.
Despite having a poor substitution for a graduation, do you have any sort of pride or feel exclusivity for being part of “The class without a graduation”?
I don’t mean you’re using it as a pick up line or anything, but just like a “yeah, I was there”.
As an atheistic Satanist, ceremony and ritual matters. They can be used to mark events or share community and the science behind their benign effect is substantial.
They don’t have to be long and drawn out. The collective I’m with (not CoS or TST) offer unbaptisms to help those who might have theist trauma for example and those last just a few minutes. Its what they can do that matters, not how long or expensive they are.
Graduations are for the parents. They want to celebrate you. They want you to feel proud and accepted by your community.
That’s what they say, but I was a parent at two graduations this year. It sure as hell wasn’t for me. Which is exactly why I’m asking if anyone actually does enjoy these things.
I hate all of it and never participated. Some people seem to like it. The same people who take pictures of themselves in front of famous sights?
Ceremony and ritual are key components of human civilization. I love them and look forward to them no matter how silly they can be.
I’m not against the idea completely. Yes, it is nice to see my kids up on the stage and hear their accomplishments, but do we really need millions of dollars in flowers and decor in an overpriced venue with 6 different speakers talking about themselves before we get to that part?
Your criticisms are valid for sure. Capitalism has made some of these important moments completely perverse. Weddings stand out as a particularly gross example. But the core is important. And I do see lots of people starting to refocus on the important aspects while ditching the nonsense. Taking weddings as an example, many of my friends have not held the absurdly expensive display and had small ceremonies with the reception where they celebrate with loved ones being the focus. Here’s hoping that trend continues!
I’m not a fan but they are not for me. I go to them because other people care and I respect them. It’s about showing support and that they matter.
All forms of ceremony, from funerals to saluting a flag, make me deeply uncomfortable and I don’t know why. I just want to break the whole thing it’s weird.
Yes! Saluting a flag, rising for the anthem, chanting, prayer before a meal.
I’m just sitting there looking at everyone participating in meaningless bullshit wondering what the point of it all is.
For me it is the fact that it is treated as mandatory and everyone gets judgy if you don’t enjoy it just right.
I like ceremonies that are freeform and hit some notes but aren’t rigid and don’t expect everyone to ‘play a part’. Some weddings and funerals where they did not follow the somber stereotypical structure were a blast because everyone attending got to celebrate in their own way. Most are absolutely dreadful.
I love it. It’s exciting! It’s colorful and reverant and steeped in tradition. It’s a strong memory to mark a transition from one phase of life to the next.
But I’m the kind of person who always wants to seize once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. Who checks every mysterious door on the off chance that today it’s unlocked.
Who checks every mysterious door on the off chance that today it’s unlocked.
Now this, I get. That’s fun and exciting. Sitting in an uncomfortable space while someone talks at you for 2 hours feels like the exact opposite of that.
Graduations don’t have much value for me. I didn’t want to go to my own, but my mom said I had to. She was paying the bills, so that’s what I did.
I didn’t want to go to my kids’ high school graduations, but my wife says I had to so I did.
Two of my three kids graduated college after an odd number of semesters, so by the time they could have gone to their college graduation, they had moved on and had no interest.
One kid went to art school, and that graduation was one I went to and enjoyed. In addition to the tedious, forgettable speeches, they also had a bunch of music and dancing.
Edit to add:
Weddings are different. The ceremonies are tedious and boring, but I consider them important. I think it’s just because of how I feel about my marriage and how I felt about my wedding. My wedding was an important milestone in my life that I wanted to share with my friends and family. My wife and I had been dating for 7 years, so it wasn’t exactly unexpected.
Funerals are not really expected to be fun. Like graduations, they’re not for the subject of the ceremony as much as they are for the attendees. My father died in May, and we were all surprised that he had decided he wanted a funeral. When his parents died, they had opted to be cremated without any funeral, and I had always assumed he would do the same.
I’m kind of glad he went the full route with a viewing because I saw him after he died in the hospital, and that wasn’t really what I wanted my last memory of him to be. I’ve always thought people were full of shit when they said the deceased looked good in the casket, because everyone I’ve ever seen looked absolutely horrible. However they did such an amazing job on my father that multiple people were surprised because it looked like he could be breathing.
It’s one thing to not want to go to yours but I think it’s pretty shitty to not want to celebrate your children unless they explicitly told you they didn’t want to go/anyone else to go.
Their high school graduations sucked. They have the graduation on the football field. No shade so everyone is baking in the sun. So many kid’s in each class that they are announcing the names one right after the other in rapid fire, people are still screaming for their kid so you don’t hear your kid’s name being called, and you’re so far away you can’t even see them.
I have no problem celebrating my kids, but that wasn’t a celebration of the kids, but that wasn’t what that graduation ceremony was. It was the school meeting an obligation in as cold and meaningless a manner as possible.
When my daughter graduated in the middle of COVID, they split the graduation up into three groups on three different days, and despite having the crowd being 1/3rd the size, they managed to have it be just as useless.
That’s funny because the other complaints were that it takes too long.
I didn’t say theirs didn’t take too long. There were a lot of kids. I think it ran around an hour and 30 minutes when they split it into thirds.
Not wanting to celebrate your kids IS shitty, but that’s a bit of a heavy handed assessment of the comment.
I didn’t want to sit through all those crappy band concerts and baseball games but I did it with excitement and I congratulated my children after every single one.
You can still be supportive of your kids while not really enjoying the activity.
If it makes you happy, go for it. If it doesn’t, skip it.
When I graduated from College, my family appreciated the pomp and circumstance. I won an academic award and my parents were very proud, so I was happy to go along with things. It was an hour or so and it wasn’t any kind of burden. Sometimes it’s important to do things for other people.
When I got married, my wife and I were already well established, so it was a break-even affair and people appreciated the party. We come from different traditions, so we picked the parts we liked and discarded the rest. Nobody left unhappy.
Well I couldn’t care about them before, then came mine and I was actually excited.
Except it was trashed with AI talk all over the place. Fuck AI.
I used to be a wedding photographer. Once you’ve been to a dozen or more weddings in a couple of years, you start to wonder what the whole point is. Asked my partner if she was ever going to get married and she laughed “fuck no”. It’s a good thing I got married before then or we would have just done the courthouse thing. Side note: Greek weddings really are something to see!
I’ve only been to funerals and 2 graduations. Always found these things boring and would never want to be the main focus or even part of the focus of one. Might have something to do with my massive social anxiety causing me to be super uncomfortable in social situations. I don’t even like being around family at gatherings. Like if I ever got married, I’d just want to do the courthouse wedding like my cousin did.
I love ceremonies ! I wish more things in life had a similar sort of etiquette about them, it would make things so much simpler !
For the ceremonies we have, I think it’s a matter of not knowing the right measure of things. I think too much importance is put on speeches, and not enough on ritual actions. Ceremonies aren’t boring, speeches are boring !
I like the special clothes, I like that sometimes there’s special music, you have to say certain phrases… People have well defined roles, there’s an air of decorum and seriousness (and oh how I wish people were generally more serious and engaged with things…), often there are flowers and other special decor all around…
Honestly, I really like ceremonies. They’re fun. I want more of them ! But fewer speeches.
It is one of Richard Wilbur’s best poems, and since it’s so accessible, I often use it to introduce students to poetry as an art form.
