Abstract
This paper provides the story, or narrative, which explains how pilgrim’s-identity is created and endures through the clothes they wear. The closure, or preferred ending, of this story of a pilgrim’s clothes, would be a ceremonious disposal, like burning them. Pilgrims are reluctant to simply throw their clothes, boots, and gear away. This paper is a philosophical reflection on how a pilgrim’s clothes construct the identity of a pilgrim; and how inanimate objects, like clothes, might become meaningful, or even ‘sacred’ in a non-religious way. This comes about because of a decision to treat them that way. We make sense of our lives in terms of stories we tell about them. Narrative is what unifies a life, and chapters of that life, into a whole, with a beginning, middle and end. This unification constructs our identity, and it is how we know we are the same person today as we were 20 years ago. The very process of linking together selected events, that are chosen as relevant, creates a meaning that explains how one event led to another. All stories come to an end, which provides the punctuation of closure which all stories must have.
Clothes are part of this unifying narrative. The unique and irreplaceable history of a set of pilgrim clothes—and not their utility-value—is what gives them meaning. In addition, support will be provided for the idea that things can become sacred through history, ritual and ceremony in the context of a community. This applies to pilgrim’s clothes; and it explains a commonplace reluctance to merely get rid of them as one would most things. The narrative of a pilgrim’s clothes comes to a fitting end, a ‘clothesure,’ with a ceremonious disposal rather than a more practical-minded jettison of trash.
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Recommended Citation
Haller, Stephen F.
(2026)
"‘Clothesure’: The End of the Narrative of a Pilgrim’s Clothes; and How Pilgrim’s Clothes Contribute to Narrative Identity,"
International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage:
Vol. 14:
Iss.
2, Article 4.
doi:https://doi.org/10.21427/22nt-9j55
Available at:
https://arrow.tudublin.ie/ijrtp/vol14/iss2/4
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21427/22nt-9j55