This is WAAAAY off topic 🙂
“And if we want to talk about ritual that is “wrong” but not assur, what about boys eating cholent, clearly a Shabbos dish, on Thursday night?”
About 28 years ago, as a 9th or 10th grader, I heard R’ Chaim Mintz Shlita, speak at the leil Shabbos Seuda in Yeshiva Staten Island. He was giving mussar to “those bachurim who went into the kitchen and ate cholent late thursday night and erev shabbos”…He listed a number of reasons why it was wrong among them, that chulent is a “special maychel shabbos” and should be saved for shabbos, and eating it before shabbos is a zilzul in the kavod shabbos.