I just discovered this amazing Mitchell & Webb sketch:
It’s really funny (you need to stick with it to the halfway point to figure out what the joke is about).
It also brings up the very interesting question of why it is that people do useless things as a kind of symbolic sacrifice. It’s a curious instinct; probably born out of simple desperation, though I think that, at the same time, it’s often the case that it’s done because it’s preferable to real sacrifices.
Chris Lansdown 
It’s as if you have no self awareness. Would you find it funny if the useless thing in the sketch consisted of dunking babies’ heads in special water, moving one’s hand in a cross shape in the air over one’s chest, or praying?
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Those aren’t useless, nor are they meant to appease capricious powers to arbitrarily give us good fortune, nor are they pretending to be highly practical activities while actually being a religious ritual.
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