Ritual: What and Why?

What are Rituals for?
Ritual is the warp and weft of life, the threads into which we weave our hopes, our fears, the successes and failures which form the tapestry of our lives.
From the little rituals of our childhood ~ bedtimes, meal times, hellos and goodbyes ~ to the great sacraments of birth, naming, coming of age, marriage and death. From the daily rituals of work and play to the great festivals that mark the passing of the seasons ... Our lives are filled with ritual, some mundane, some sacred, some personal and private, some communal and public.
Every change in our lives, from getting out of bed to getting married, we mark with some kind of ritual. Ritual keeps us in tune with ourselves, our surroundings, our friends and neighbours, and our divinities.
Some of us like simple rituals, not too much fuss, the minimum of bother. Others like grand symbolic gestures, incense, music and poetry.
But whatever our inclinations, we can't seem to live happily without these constant reminders of who we are, what we're doing, where we've been, and where we're headed.

What is Ritual?
While art historians and critics wrestle with the question of "What is Art?" (a debate which the televisation of the Turner Prize has made increasingly public), anthropologists have been puzzling over their own, less public, dilemma: "What is Ritual?".
As with definitions of art, some theories have been so all-encompassing as to include almost any human activity, while others have been so restrictive as to include only activity within the confines of a temple or church.
This parallel is not surprising, as most prehistoric art seems to have been created for ritual purposes, and what evidence there is for prehistoric ritual seems always to have involved some kind of art (not just paintings and sculptures, but dance, music, drama, etc.)
Some anthropologists have taken Ritual to mean only activity that happens repetitively. Others have included only the formal rituals of religions. The traditionalism of ritual has sometimes been emphasised, but at the expense of Creative Rituals.
Recently, anthropologists have been looking at definitions which emphasise the 'differentness' of ritual activity from mundane activity. That is, ritual as being activity which is seen as different from the everyday activities of gathering food, raising children, sharing information, etc., and which is deliberately set apart from those activities by some pre-agreed signals (e.g. a bell summoning the congregation to the Church for communion).
Not surprisingly, this sounds remarkably similar to currently popular definitions of art. For me this raises another obvious question, one which might horrify both contemporary artists and anthropologists: Can Ritual and Art be separated? Aren't they really two inseparable sides of the same coin?