I'm currently reading "The disappearance of rituals" by Byun-Chul Han which is highlights the roles of ritual to bring people together into those shared experiences which bind people into a shared narrative and world view.

There are parts of the book I agree with and some I disagree with, but an earlier version of me would have dismissed the whole topic as fluff and any notion of ritual or narrative as superstitious nonsense that needed to be swept away by the light of reason and science. Ultimately though the things that really matter in people's lives tend to be those things which are not coldly rational - love and a place in a wider narrative