I think it's the conflating of "religious" and "ritual" that gets out of hand.
So if your family has a tradition of Sunday Morning Waffles, then sure it's "ritual" in a very minor sense. But it's not religious. You don't make waffles every Sunday morning to appease the Waffle Gods, or because of some superstition that the next winter will be terrible if you don't. But these are the sorts of things that get associated with "ritual".
Archeologists being lazy about their interpretations leads to a view of ancient civilisations that they were all "permeated with magic and superstition". And I don't think the evidence actually supports that.
So if your family has a tradition of Sunday Morning Waffles, then sure it's "ritual" in a very minor sense. But it's not religious. You don't make waffles every Sunday morning to appease the Waffle Gods, or because of some superstition that the next winter will be terrible if you don't. But these are the sorts of things that get associated with "ritual".
Archeologists being lazy about their interpretations leads to a view of ancient civilisations that they were all "permeated with magic and superstition". And I don't think the evidence actually supports that.