Rites of passage

Rites of passage are rituals performed by people, individually or as a social group. They mark the end of one phase of life, and the arrival of another.
All people in every society and culture experience rites of passage. They happen differently, for various reasons, and at special times, depending on what society or culture the person comes from. Rites of passage celebrate and protect the person or people who are changing. They signify the transformation from one social status (e.g. coming of age), place (e.g. crossing a national border), condition (e.g. recovering from sickness), time (e.g. celebrating the new year), to the next.
Arnold van Gennep.
The French social scientist Arnold van Gennep (23 April 1873 – 7 May 1957) most famously defined the concept of rites of passage in his book "" ("The Rites of Passage"), first published in 1909. Van Gennep studied ethnographic reports from various parts of the world that described rites of passage. He concluded that they are universally structured even if the rites of passage themselves differ significantly in character between societies and cultures.
The universal structure of rites of passage.
Rites of passage are ordered into three phases.
Rites of passage and cultural diversity.
By acknowledging the various ways different societies and cultures perform rites of passage we observe cultural diversity. Learning about rites of passage cross culturally can help us to understand others and ourselves. An awareness of cultural diversity is essential to form an open-minded, tolerant and accepting view of people who are not from the same society or culture as our own.