Rite of passage
A ceremony that marks the move from one stage of life to another.
Also: ritual of transition
A rite of passage is a ceremony that marks a change in a person's status, such as birth, coming of age, marriage or death. The anthropologist Arnold van Gennep, writing in 1909, observed that such rites share three phases: separation from the old status, a threshold or in-between period, and reincorporation into the community in a new role. The pattern fits a bar mitzvah, a wedding, an initiation in the bush and a graduation. The rites give a society a way to recognise change and teach duties, and give the person the sense of having crossed a line that others have also crossed.
Region: North America