In my personal experience, I became familiar with the topic of rituals while studying child psychology. If you introduce so-called family rituals into family life, this helps relieve anxiety and improve emotional well-being. There is no magic in this, there are certain patterns and mechanisms. I propose to figure out how it works and what exactly can be called a ritual (in the psychological sense). The benefit of a family ritual is that it allows you to maintain contact between children and parents, husband and wife. These could be ordinary rituals: saying “good morning” and “good night”, there could be a special 15 minutes before bed with reading a fairy tale to a child, or watching a movie on Sunday. I think any quality time with another person that is repeated can be called a ritual. Jung believed that through ritual a person expresses his important inner experiences and states in order to ensure his stability. With changes and transitions of these states, a protection-ritual is formed. This protective function is very visible when obsessive thoughts and actions appear, when tension increases, a symptom is formed (this is about violations). But under normal conditions, protection works as a help. So, family rituals, types (Milan School of Systemic Family Therapy): rituals of everyday life (eating, going to bed, meeting, saying goodbye); rituals of the family calendar (birthdays, anniversaries); rituals for celebrating events marked in the “external” calendar (Christmas, New Year); rituals of life cycles (wedding, birth of a child, death). The secret that makes a ritual effective is inclusion in it. Because if you do it formally, it is not clear why, there is unlikely to be a result. On the other hand, a ritual is an action that needs to be repeated many times. This is also the principle of his work. I will give one example from my family. When my children went to school, they became more busy with lessons and sections, and our total time became much less. And questions for each other never went away. There is little time, but a lot of emotions. This is the evening ritual that has emerged: during dinner, everyone talks about what was pleasant and what was unpleasant during the day + plans for tomorrow. Now we rarely use this. But when children want to say something important, they remember this ritual, out of necessity. And the point here is that the whole family, all together, and you can talk about what is relevant now. By the way, since the beginning of quarantine they have proposed resuming this ritual. What next? I want to convey that I do not recommend using ready-made rituals. Will explain. Each family, together and separately, has its own experience, interests and needs. It’s great if you come up with your own ritual. Or, right now, try to remember some example from your childhood (share in the comments, very interesting). Offer the same. This is also the secret of strong families - passing on traditions and rituals by inheritance, supplementing them with new ones. Another important point is that ritual can be destructive. The one that harms. Then it’s better to think about how to remove it from your life or replace it. A short summary of the above: the ritual helps maintain stability and balance in the family, in relationships between partners. It is best to create a ritual, taking into account the characteristics of those for whom it is. The ritual should be positive, unite the family and at the same time leave personal space for everyone. In modern conditions, I can confidently recommend board games for families, teenagers and couples. In terms of psychological ones, these are definitely Gunther Horn's games. In them you can work on difficult feelings, boundaries, strategies.