Fraternities and Sororities in North America - Rituals and Symbols

Rituals and Symbols

Most Greek letter organizations maintain traditions, sometimes accompanied by secret rituals, which are generally symbolic in nature. They include an initiation ceremony, and may also include passwords, songs, and handshakes. For example, writer Julian Hawthorne, the son of Nathaniel Hawthorne, wrote (in his posthumously published Memoirs) of an ironic coincidence surrounding his fraternal initiation:

I was initiated into a college secret society—a couple of hours of grotesque and good-humored rodomontade and horseplay, in which I cooperated as in a kind of pleasant nightmare, confident, even when branded with a red-hot iron or doused head-over heels in boiling oil, that it would come out all right. The neophyte is effectively blindfolded during the proceedings, and at last, still sightless, I was led down flights of steps into a silent crypt, and helped into a coffin, where I was to stay until the Resurrection...Thus it was that just as my father passed from this earth, I was lying in a coffin during my initiation into Delta Kappa Epsilon.

Meetings of active members are generally kept private and not discussed without formal approval of the chapter as a whole.

For organizations with Greek letters composing their name, these letters are the initials of a motto (such as Delta Upsilon), a set of virtues (such as Alpha Kappa Lambda), or the history of its organization (such as Phi Tau).

Greek letter organizations often have a number of distinctive emblems, such as colors, flags, flowers, in addition to a badge (or pin), coat of arms, and/or seal. An open motto (indicating that the organization has a "secret motto" as well) is used to express the unique ideals of a fraternity or sorority.