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In his sublime 2004 book about the epic friendship between FDR and Winston Churchill, author Jon Meacham says one of the great things the two men had in common was a love of ceremony, the ritualistic performance of a rite or celebration. They weren’t alone - a year ago this month, 20 million people tuned in to watch the Prince of Wales crowned King Charles in one of humanity’s most elaborate and ancient rites. Whether a college graduation, a wedding, a funeral or, in my case, the cocktail hour, we mark occasions great and small with ritual. I then wondered what is our oldest such ceremony and, after a bit of digging, I here offer my answer.
The hands down best practitioners of this art on Earth are the British. If you’ve been party to one of their events, and I have, you’re swept away by the sheer grandeur of the whole thing.
In graduate school at Canterbury near Christmas, a transcendent performance by the cathedral’s choir had me - for a moment - believing there was a God. But I think the oldest ritual title goes to an event at the Tower of London.
It is the locking up of the Tower gate and it’s called the Ceremony of the Keys.
Each and every night at precisely 9.52 pm a lone figure in a long red coat walks down Water Lane, the narrow cobbled street enclosed between the mighty inner and outer walls of the Tower of London.
Sometimes only his lamp can be seen through the thick river mist that engulfs him when it rises up from the Thames. He is indifferent to the meteorological conditions; he is resolute in his grave task, a task which went on during the Plague, the Great Fire, the Blitz and after a great many coronations.
At the Bloody Tower archway, a Sentry challenges the Chief Warder who carries the keys.
Sentry: "Halt! Who comes there?"
Chief Warder: "The keys".
Sentry: "Whose keys?"
Chief Warder: "King Charles’s keys".
Sentry: "Pass King Charles's Keys. All's well".
This ceremony began in 1280 and it will continue long after we are gone. We are humans and we care very much about ritual and we always have.