In our last article about changing rituals, we proposed that in Australia and other westernised cultures, institution-led and collective rituals are weakening in part due to evolving technology and cultural practices.

Friday date night at the movies has evolved into ‘Netflix and chill’; your greatest dating wingman is now an app, and meditation and exercise now happen in the comfort of your own home via the press of a button.

But if we are continuously striving for convenience over connection, where does that leave us?

Ritual is as much about coming to understand ourselves as it is about connection and growing community. There is a reason watching the footy feels more atmospheric when you are at the game, singing along with the crowd, than watching at home. There is also a reason that workplaces foster Friday drinks or other staff connection rituals.

Rituals do more than mark an occasion. They create a sense of ‘us’.

When rituals are shared, they function as social glue, deeply impacting child development and satisfaction in our relationships and work.

In a review of 50 years of research on “naturally occurring family routines and rituals,” researchers at Syracuse concluded that everyday family practices such as shared meals, bedtime routines, and holiday traditions help to strengthen family cohesion, support children’s emotional development, and reinforce identity by fostering connections across generations.

In another study conducted by Harvard Business School, researchers found that workers experienced a 16% increase in the meaning in their work when practising workplace rituals.

Ritual is also used by the brain as a “psychological shield” against uncertainty. In a study conducted at Berkeley University, researchers found that when under threat (e.g., from natural disasters or high stress), human ritualistic behaviours organically spike as a subconscious mechanism to regain a sense of personal control.

The use of ritual as a way to ground people is common to organisations like Meals on Wheels SA. Square Holes has partnered with Meals on Wheels SA since 2022 on yearly research projects, exploring customer satisfaction, changes in expectations and usage of the service, as well as volunteer experience.

Cathy Lock, Stakeholder Engagement Consultant for Meals on Wheels SA says that the Meals on Wheels service combats loneliness and uncertainty through the ritual of a regular meal and human connection.

“At Meals on Wheels SA our key services are providing a healthy meal and social connection. Both of these are fundamental human needs and highly ritualised across all cultures and communities, which informs our customer expectations and satisfaction with menu choices, times and methods of delivery and the way they prefer to consume the meal,” says Lock.

“The knock on the door with their meal delivery and a cheery greeting is for many a key moment in their daily routine and a highlight of the day.”

Lock adds that this ritual also provides similar benefits for the volunteers.

“The rituals of our daily service are also important to our volunteers, who find a regular commitment to coming together with others to prepare and deliver food. Volunteering provides an important structure to their week, improves their own wellbeing, and the regular contact with familiar customers is an important touchstone with their community.”

Organisations like Meals on Wheels SA demonstrate how ritual can become an important piece of social infrastructure – by transforming a collection of individuals into a community.

For sporting clubs, ritual comes naturally and is all a part of building team camaraderie and honouring traditions. Rebecca Forest, Henley Lifesaving Club, Board Member, says that ritual is a vital part of club life.

“As South Australia’s first surf lifesaving club, Henley has a lot of traditions and routines that have become part of club life over the years. A lot of these things are not formal traditions. They have just developed over time. They are the things people remember, look forward to and associate with being part of Henley,” says Forest.

Forest explains that ritual is a core part of how the club demonstrate and helps foster their defining values.

“They also fit with our FIRST values , Family, Integrity, Respect, Safety and Teamwork. You can see those values in the way people look after each other, help out, train together, patrol together and spend time together outside the formal parts of club life,” says Forest.

Sociologist Émile Durkheim famously described the heightened feeling produced by communal gatherings as collective effervescence: the sense that for a moment we are part of something larger than ourselves.

These moments are becoming more and more critical at a time when some traditional forms of connection are weakening.

In Australia, only 53% of people had face-to-face contact with family or friends outside their household at least weekly in 2025, down from 68% in 2019. Formal volunteering has also declined, from 30% of Australians in 2019 to 23% in 2025.

At the same time, 49% said they at least sometimes felt isolated from others and 41% sometimes or often felt left out.

Ritual helps bridge that gap because it does not just put people in proximity; it gives them something to participate in together.

Community is rarely created by a single grand gesture. More often, it is built through small things done together, again and again.

Square Holes is a cultural insight studio.

We design mixed method explorations of people and culture beyond the category,  uncovering the patterns, tensions and shifts shaping behaviour to inform strategy, inspire innovation and enable confident decisions. Our studio model brings together the right mix of thinkers, researchers and specialists for each exploration. If you’re navigating change, entering a new market, or seeking deeper understanding of people and culture, let’s start a conversation >