enuated that a periodic celebration is all that we are prepared to commit to them; so what they index is not our social reality but our nostalgia, our bad conscience, and our linger- ing piety in regard to what is no longer binding. (When friends remove to another town, the celebration of chance conjunctions can become the substance of the relationship not its expres- sion.) Furthermore, as Moore and Myerhoff have suggested, the categories of persons that come together in a ceremony (and thus the structures that are involved) may never come together again, ceremonially or otherwise. A one-time intersection of variously impinging interests may be represented, and nothing be- yond that. Certainly celebrative occasions such as this presidential add

These embodiments are centered in ceremonies (in turn embedded in celebrative social occasions) and presum- ably allow the participants to affirm their affili- ation and commitment to their collectivities, and revive their ultimate beliefs