Paper short abstract:

Celebrants and changing rites of passage: what changes and what stays the same?

Paper long abstract:

Independent celebrants are contemporary ritual-makers. They actively engage in ritual invention and change. In their role as agents of their clients, celebrants openly appropriate fragments of cultural customs and ritual traditions relating to the individual beliefs and life experiences of their clients and reconstruct these in pastiche forms of ritual. In this way their role is relatively passive, responding to the desires and demands of their diverse mix of clients by creating and performing for them personalised rites of passage and other ceremonies.

Despite this openness by ritual-makers and their clients around appropriating and inventing ritual, when we observe the rituals which take place, traditional ritual forms can be seen to be performed again and again. Are celebrants intentionally protecting or preserving these important ritual forms (and if so why?), or is there an intrinsic resilience to ritual form which ensures it maintains integrity and continuity in the face of rampant individualism, eclecticism, and consumerism?