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MARRIAGE CUSTOMS

Marriage Customs	200 A.D.	Northern Europe

Among the Germanic Goths, a man married a woman from within his own community. However, when women were in short supply, he would capture his bride-to-be from a neighboring village. The future bridegroom, accompanied by a male companion, would seize any young girl who had wandered away from the safety of her parental home. Our custom of a best man is a relic of that two-man, strong-armed tactic; only the best man would do for such an important task.

The symbolic act of carrying the bride over the threshold of her new home sprang later from this practice of abduction, which literally swept a bride off her feet.

Around 200 A.D. the best man carried much more than a ring. Since the bride's family's attempting to forcibly gain her return was a very real threat, the best man stayed by the groom's side throughout the marriage ceremony, alert and armed. He also might serve as a sentry outside the newlyweds' home. While much of this is based on German folklore, it does have its basis in written documentation and physical artifacts. As an example, forcible recapture by the bride's family was perceived as so genuine a threat that beneath the church altars of many early peoples—including the Huns, the Goths, the Visigoths, and the Vandals—there was an arsenal of clubs, knives, and spears.

The tradition of the bride standing on the left of the groom was also more than meaningless etiquette. Among the Northern European barbarians (so named by the Romans), a groom placed his captured bride on his left to protect her, thus freeing his right hand, the sword hand, against sudden attack.

Wedding Ring	2800 B.C.	Egypt

The origin and significance of the wedding ring is much disputed. One school of thought maintains that the modern ring is symbolic of the fetters used by barbarians to tether a bride to her captor's home. If that's true, today's double ring ceremonies are a fitting expression of the newfound equality of the sexes.

The other school of thought focuses on the first actual bands exchanged in a marriage ceremony. A finger ring was first used in the Third Dynasty of the Old Kingdom of Egypt, around 2800 B.C. To the Egyptians, a circle, having no beginning or end, signified eternity—for which marriage was binding.

Rings of gold were the most highly valued by wealthy Egyptians—and later Romans. Among the numerous 2,000-year-old rings unearthed at Pompeii was one of a unique design that became popular throughout Europe centuries later, and in America during the Flower Child era of the '60s and '70s. This gold marriage ring (of the type now called a "friendship ring") depicts two carved hands clasped in a handshake.

There is historical evidence that young Roman men of moderate financial means often went for broke for their future brides. Tertullian, a Christian priest in the 2nd Century A.D., wrote that "most women know nothing of gold except the single marriage ring placed on one finger." According to Tertullian, the average Roman housewife proudly wore her gold band in public, but at home she "wore a ring of iron."

In earlier centuries, a ring's design often conveyed special meaning. Several Roman bands still in existence bear a miniature key welded to one side. The key was not just a sentimental suggestion that a bride had unlocked her husband's heart. Rather it symbolized a central tenet of the marriage contract in accordance with Roman law: that a wife was entitled to half her husband's wealth, and that she could help herself to a bag of grain, a roll of linen, or whatever rested in his storehouse at will.

Diamond Engagement Ring	15th Century	Venice

A Venetian wedding document dated 1503 lists "one marrying ring having diamond." The gold wedding ring of a woman named Mary of Medina, was among the early betrothal rings featuring a diamond setting. The Venetians were the first to discover that diamonds are one of the hardest, most enduring substances in nature, and that fine cutting and polishing releases its brilliance. Diamonds, set in bands of silver and gold, became popular for betrothal rings among wealthy Venetians toward the close of the 15th Century. Rarity and cost limited their rapid proliferation throughout Europe, but their intrinsic appeal was such that by the 17th Century, the diamond ring had become the most popular and sought after statement of a European engagement.

One of history's early diamond engagement rings was also its smallest, worn by a two-year-old bride-to-be. The ring was fashioned for the betrothal of Princess Mary, daughter of Henry VIII, to the dauphin of France, son of King Francis I. Born on February 28, 1518, the dauphin was immediately engaged as a matter of state policy to assure a closer alliance between England and France.

Though the origin of the diamond engagement ring is known, that of betrothal rings in general is less certain. This practice began, though, well before the 15th Century.

An early Anglo-Saxon custom required a prospective bridegroom to break some highly valued personal belonging. Half of the token was kept by the groom and half by the bride's father. A wealthy man was expected to split a piece of gold or silver. Exactly when the broken piece of metal was symbolically replaced by a ring is not certain. The weight of historical evidence seems to indicate that betrothal rings (at least among European peoples) existed before wedding rings, and that the ring a bride received at the time of proposal was the same one used during the wedding ceremony. Etymologists find one accurate description of the engagement ring's intent in its original Roman name, arrhae, meaning "earnest money."

For Roman Catholics, the official introduction of the engagement ring is well documented.  In 860 A.D., Pope Nicholas I decreed that an engagement ring was a required component of nuptial intent. An uncompromising defender of the sanctity of marriage, Nicholas once excommunicated two archbishops involved with the marriage, divorce, and remarriage of Lothair II of Lorraine, charging them with "conniving at bigamy." Further, Nicholas declared that a ring of just any material or worth was not acceptable. The engagement ring had to be made of a valuable metal (preferably gold), which often required considerable financial sacrifice for the husband-to-be.

In that same century, two other customs were established: forfeiture of the ring by a man who reneged on a marriage pledge and returning of the ring by a woman who broke off an engagement. The Church became unbending regarding the seriousness of a marriage promise and the punishment if broken. The Council of Elvira condemned the parents of a man who terminated an engagement to excommunication for three years. And if a woman backed out for reasons unacceptable to the Church, her parish priest had the authority to order her into a nunnery for life. For a time, "till death do us part" began weeks or months before the prospective bride and groom were even married.

Ring Finger	3rd Century B.C.	Greece

The early Hebrews placed the wedding ring on the index finger. In India, nuptial rings were worn on the thumb. The Western custom of placing a wedding ring on the "third" finger (not counting the thumb) began with the Greeks, as the result of their carelessness in cataloguing human anatomy.

Greek physicians in the 3rd Century B.C. believed that a certain vein, the "vein of love," ran from the "third finger" directly to the heart. It became the logical digit to carry a ring symbolizing an affair of the heart.

The Romans, plagiarizing Greek anatomy charts, adopted the ring practice unquestioningly. They did attempt to clear up the ambiguity surrounding exactly which finger constituted the third, introducing the phrase "the finger next to the least." This also became the Roman physician's "healing finger" and was the one used to stir drug mixtures. It was believed that since the finger's vein ran to the heart, any potentially toxic concoction would be readily recognized by a doctor "in his heart" before it was administered to a patient.

The Christians continued this ring finger practice, but worked their way across the hand to the vein of love. A groom first placed the ring on the top of the bride's index finger, with the words "In the name of the Father." Then, praying, "In the name of the Son," he moved the ring to her middle finger, and finally, with the concluding words "and of the Holy Spirit, Amen," to the third finger. This was known as the Trinitarian formula.

In the East, the Orientals did not approve of finger rings, believing them to be merely ornamental, lacking social symbolism or religious significance.

Marriage Banns	8th Century	Europe

During European feudal times, all public announcements concerning deaths, taxes, or births were called "banns." Today we use the term exclusively for an announcement that two people propose to marry. That interpretation began as a result of an order by Charlemagne, king of the Franks, who was crowned Emperor of the Romans on Christmas Day in 800 A.D. , marking the birth of the Holy Roman Empire.

Charlemagne, who had a vast region to rule, had an extremely practical medical reason for instituting the practice of marriage banns.

Among both rich and poor in those days, a child's parentage was not always clear; extramarital indiscretions too frequently lead to a half-brother and half-sister marrying. Charlemagne became alarmed by the high rate of sibling marriages and the subsequent genetic damage to the offspring. He issued an edict throughout his unified kingdom:  All marriages were to be publicly proclaimed at least seven days before the ceremony. To avoid consanguinity between the prospective bride and groom, any person with knowledge that the man and woman were related as brother or sister, or as half-siblings, was ordered to come forward and provide this information. The practice proved to be quite successful and was widely endorsed by all faiths.

Wedding Cake	1st Century B.C.	Rome

The wedding cake was not always eaten by the bride; originally it was thrown at her! It developed as one of many fertility symbols integral to the marriage ceremony. For until modern times, children were expected to follow marriage as faithfully as night follows day; and almost as frequently.

Wheat, long a symbol of fertility and prosperity, was one of the earliest grains to ceremoniously shower new brides; and unmarried young women were expected to scramble for the grains to ensure their own betrothals (today it's for the bridal bouquet).

Early Roman bakers, whose confectionery skills were held in very high regard, altered the practice. Around 100 B.C., they began baking the wedding wheat into small, sweet cakes—to be eaten, not thrown. Wedding guests, however, loath to abandon the fun of pelting the bride with wheat confetti, often tossed the cakes.

According to the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius, author of De rerum natura ("On the Nature of Things"), a compromise ritual developed in which the wheat cakes were crumbled over a bride's head rather than being thrown at her. And, as a further symbol of fertility, the couple was required to eat a portion of the crumbs, a custom known as confarreatio, or "eating together." After exhausting the supply of cakes, guests were presented with handfuls of confetto—"sweet meats"—a confetti-like mixture of nuts, dried fruits, and honeyed almonds, sort of an ancient trail mix.

The practice of eating crumbs of small wedding cakes spread throughout Western Europe. In England, the crumbs were washed down with special ale. The brew itself was referred to as bryd ealu, or "bride's ale," which evolved into the word "bridal."

In the early Middle Ages, the wedding cake rite, in which tossed food symbolized an abundance of offspring, changed during lean times. Raw wheat or rice was again used to shower brides. The once decorative cakes became simple biscuits or scones to be eaten. And guests were encouraged to bake their own biscuits and bring them to the ceremony. Leftovers were distributed among the poor. Ironically, it was these austere practices that with time, ingenuity, and French contempt for all things British led to the most opulent of wedding adornments: the multitiered cake.

The legend is this: Throughout the British Isles, it had become customary to pile the contributed scones, biscuits, and other baked goods atop one another into an enormous heap. The higher the better, for height augured prosperity for the couple, who exchanged kisses over the mound. In the 1660s, during the reign of King Charles II, a French chef (whose name has been lost to history) was visiting London and observed the cake piling ceremony. Appalled at the haphazard manner in which the British stacked baked goods, often to have them come tumbling down, he conceived the idea of transforming the mountain of bland biscuits into an iced, multitiered cake sensation. British papers of the day are supposed to have deplored the French excess, but before the close of the century, British bakers were offering the very same magnificent creations.

Throwing Shoes at the Bride	Antiquity	Asia and Europe

Today old shoes are often tied to newlyweds' cars and few people ask why. Why, of all things, shoes? And why old shoes?

Originally, shoes were only one of many objects tossed at a bride to insure a bounty of children. In fact, shoes were preferred over the equally traditional wheat and rice because from ancient times the foot has been a powerful phallic symbol. In several cultures, particularly among the Eskimos, a woman experiencing difficulty in conceiving was instructed to carry a piece of an old shoe with her at all times. The preferred shoes for throwing at a bride—and later for tying to the newlyweds' car—were old ones strictly for economic reasons. Shoes have never been inexpensive.

Thus, the throwing of shoes, rice, cake crumbs, and confetti, as well as the origin of the wedding cake, are all expressions of good wishes for a fruitful union. It's rather ironic that today, with the strong emphasis on delayed childbearing and family planning, modern wedding ceremonies perpetuate customs meant to induce maximum fertility.

Honeymoon	Early Christian Era	Scandinavia

There is a vast difference between the original meaning of "honeymoon" and its present day connotation—a blissful, much sought seclusion as prelude to married life. The word's antecedent, the ancient Norse hjunotts-manathr, is quite cynical in meaning, and the seclusion it denotes was once anything but blissful.

When a man from a Northern European community abducted a bride from a neighboring village, it was imperative that he take her into hiding for a period of time. Friends wished him safety, and only the best man knew his whereabouts. When the bride's family abandoned their search, he returned to his own people. At least, that is a popular explanation offered by folklorists for the origin of the honeymoon; honeymoon meant hiding. For couples whose affections were mutual, the daily chores and hardships of village life did not allow for the luxury of days or weeks of blissful idleness.

The Scandinavian word for "honeymoon" derives in part from an ancient Northern European custom. Newlyweds, for the first month of married life, drank a daily cup of honeyed wine called mead. Both the drink and the practice of stealing brides are part of the history of Attila, king of the Asiatic Huns from 433 to 453 A.D.: The warrior guzzled tankards of the alcoholic distillate at his marriage in 450 to the Roman princess Honoria, sister of Emperor Valentinian III. Attila abducted her from a previous marriage and claimed her for his own—along with laying claim to the western half of the Roman Empire. Three years later, at another feast, Attila's unquenchable passion for mead led to an excessive consumption which induced vomiting, stupor, coma, and his death.

While the "honey" in the word "honeymoon" derives straightforwardly from the honeyed wine mead, the "moon" stems from a cynical inference. To Northern Europeans, the term "moon" connoted the celestial body's monthly cycle; its combination with "honey" suggested that all moons or months of married life were not as sweet as the first. During the 16th and 17th centuries, British prose writers and poets frequently employed the Nordic interpretation of honeymoon as a waxing and waning of marital affection.

Wedding March	19th Century	England

The traditional church wedding features two bridal marches, by two different classical composers.  The bride walks down the aisle to the majestic, moderately paced music of the "Bridal Chorus" from Richard Wagner's 1848 opera Lohengrin. The newlyweds exit to the more jubilant, upbeat strains of the "Wedding March" from Felix Mendelssohn's 1826 A Midsummer Night's Dream.

The custom dates back to the royal marriage in 1858 of Victoria, princess of Great Britain and empress of Germany, to Prince Frederick William of Prussia. Victoria, the eldest daughter of Britain's Queen Victoria, selected the music herself. Victoria was an avid patron of the arts and she valued the works of both Mendelssohn and Wagner. Given the British penchant for copying the monarchy, brides throughout the British Isles, nobility and commoners alike, were soon marching to Victoria's drummer, establishing a Western wedding tradition.

White Wedding Dress/Veil	16th Century	England and France

White has denoted purity and virginity for centuries. But in ancient Rome, yellow was the socially accepted color for a bride's wedding attire, and a veil of flame-hued yellow, the flammeum, covered her face. The bridal veil, in fact, predates the wedding dress by centuries. And the facial veil itself predates the bridal veil.

Historians of fashion claim that the facial veil was strictly a male invention, and one of the oldest devices designed to keep married and single women humble, subservient, and hidden from other males. Although the veil at various times throughout its long history also served as a symbol of elegance and intrigue, modesty and mourning, it is one article of feminine attire that women may never have created for themselves.

Originating in the East at least 4,000 years ago, veils were worn throughout life by unmarried women as a sign of modesty and by married women as a sign of submissiveness to their husbands. In Muslim religions, a woman was expected to cover her head and part of her face whenever she left the house. As time passed, the rules (made by men) became stricter and only a woman's eyes were permitted to remain uncovered—a concession to necessity, since ancient veils were of heavy weaves, which interfered with vision.

Customs were less severe and formal in Northern European countries. Only abducted brides wore veils. Color was unimportant, concealment paramount. Among the Greeks and the Romans by the 4th Century B.C., sheer, translucent veils were the vogue at weddings. They were pinned to the hair or held in place by ribbons, and yellow had become the preferred color—for veil and wedding gown. During the Middle Ages, color ceased to be a primary concern; emphasis was on the richness of fabric and decorative embellishments.

Writers in England and France first commented on the practice of wearing white at weddings in the 16th Century. White was a visual statement of a bride's virginity—so obvious and public a statement that it did not please everyone. Clergymen, for instance, felt that virginity, a marriage prerequisite, should not have to be blatantly advertised. For the next 150 years, British newspapers and magazines carried the running controversy fired by white wedding ensembles.

By the late 18th Century, white had become the standard wedding color. Fashion historians claim this was due mainly to the fact that most gowns of the time were white because white was the color of formal fashion. In 1813, the first fashion plate of a white wedding gown and veil appeared in the influential French Journal des Dames. From that point onward, the style was set.

Divorce	Antiquity	Africa and Asia

Before there can be a formal dissolution of marriage, there has to be an official marriage. The earliest existing marriage certificate was found in the 5th Century B.C. among Aramaic papyri relics from a Jewish garrison stationed at Elephantine in Egypt. The contract is a concise, unadorned, unromantic bill of sale: six cows in exchange for a healthy fourteen-year-old girl.

Under the Romans, who were great legal scholars, the marriage certificate mushroomed into a complex, multipage document of legalese. It rigidly stated such terms as the conditions of the dowry and the division of property upon divorce or death. In the 1st Century A.D., a revised marriage certificate was officially introduced among the Hebrews, which is still used today with only minor alterations.

Divorce, too, began as a simple, somewhat informal procedure. In early Athens and Rome, legal grounds for the dissolution of a marriage were unheard of; a man could divorce his wife whenever like turned to dislike. And though he needed to obtain a bill of divorce from a local magistrate, there are no records of one ever having been denied.

As late as the 7th Century, an Anglo-Saxon husband could divorce his wife for the most far flung and farfetched of reasons. A legal work of the day states, "A wife might be repudiated on proof of her being barren, deformed, silly, passionate, luxurious, rude, habitually drunk, gluttonous, very garrulous, quarrelsome or abusive."

Anthropologists who have studied divorce customs in ancient and modern societies agree on one issue: Historically, divorce involving mutual consent was more widespread in matrilineal tribes, in which the wife was esteemed as the procreative force and the head of the household. Conversely, in a patrilineal culture, in which the procreative and sexual rights of a bride were often symbolically transferred to the husband with the payment of so called bridewealth, divorce strongly favored the wishes and whims of the male.

 

BIRTHDAY CUSTOMS

Today it's customary to celebrate a living person's birthday. But if one Western tradition had prevailed, we'd all be observing annual postmortem celebrations of the death day, once a more significant event.

Many of our birthday customs have switched one hundred eighty degrees from what they were in the past. Children's birthdays were never observed, nor were those of women. And the decorated birthday cake, briefly a Greek tradition, went unbaked for centuries—though it reappeared to be topped with candles and greeted with a rousing chorus of "Happy Birthday to You." How did we come by our many birthday customs?

In Egypt, and later in Babylonia, dates of birth were recorded and celebrated for male children of royalty. Birthday fetes were unheard of for the lower classes, and for women of almost any rank other than a queen; only a king, queen, or high-ranking nobleman even recognized the day he or she was born, let alone commemorated it annually.

The first birthday celebrations in recorded history, around 3000 B.C., were those of the early pharaohs of Egypt. The practice began after Pharaoh Menes united the Upper and Lower Kingdoms. Celebrations were elaborate household feasts in which servants, slaves, and freedmen took part; prisoners were often released from the royal jails.

Two ancient female birthdays are documented. From Plutarch, the first century Greek biographer and essayist, we know that Cleopatra IV, the last member of the Ptolemaic Dynasty to rule Egypt, threw an immense birthday celebration for her lover, Mark Anthony, at which the invited guests were themselves lavished with royal gifts. An earlier Egyptian queen, Cleopatra II, who incestuously married her brother Ptolemy and had a son by him, received from her husband one of the most macabre birthday presents in history: the slaughtered and dismembered body of their son.

The Greeks adopted the Egyptian idea of birthday celebrations, and from the Persians, renowned among ancient confectioners, they added the custom of a sweet birthday cake as a hallmark of the occasion. The writer Philochorus tells us that worshipers of Artemis, goddess of the moon and the hunt, celebrated her birthday on the sixth day of every month by baking a large cake of flour and honey. There is evidence suggesting that Artemis's cake might actually have been topped with lighted candles, since candles signified moonlight, the goddess's earthward radiance.

Birthdays of Greek deities were celebrated monthly, each god hailed with twelve fetes a year. At the other extreme, birthdays of mortal women and children were considered too unimportant to observe. But when the birthday of the man of the house arrived, no banquet was deemed too lavish. The Greeks called these festivities for living males Genethlia, and the annual celebrations continued for years after a man's death, with the postmortem observances known as Genesia.

The Romans added a new twist to birthday celebrations. Before the dawn of the Christian era, the Roman senate inaugurated the custom (still practiced today) of making the birthdays of important statesmen national holidays. In 44 B.C., the senate passed a resolution making the assassinated Caesar's birthday an annual observance—highlighted by a public parade, a circus performance, gladiatorial combats, an evening banquet, and a theatrical presentation of a dramatic play.

With the rise of Christianity, the tradition of celebrating birthdays ceased altogether.

To the early followers of Christ, who were oppressed, persecuted, and martyred by the Jews and the pagans—and who believed that infants entered this world with the original sin of Adam condemning their souls—the world was a harsh, cruel place. There was no reason to celebrate one's birth. But since death was the true deliverance, the passage to eternal paradise, every person's death day merited prayerful observance.

Contrary to popular belief, it was the death days and not the birthdays of saints that were celebrated and became their "feast days." Church historians interpret many early Christian references to "birthdays" as passage or birth into the afterlife. "A birthday of a saint," clarified the early Church apologist Peter Chrysologus, "is not that in which they are born in the flesh, but that in which they are born from earth into heaven, from labor to rest."

There was a further reason why early church fathers preached against celebrating birthdays: They considered the festivities, borrowed from the Egyptians and the Greeks, as relics of pagan practices. In A.D. 245, when a group of early Christian historians tried to determine the exact date of Christ's birth, the Catholic Church ruled the undertaking sacrilegious, proclaiming that it would be sinful to observe the birthday of Christ "as though He were a King Pharaoh."

In the 4th Century, though, the Church began to alter its attitude toward birthday celebrations—and it also commenced serious discussions to settle the date of Christ's birth. The result, of course, marked the beginning of the tradition of celebrating Christmas. It was with the celebration of Christ's nativity that the Western world returned to the celebration of birthdays.

By the 12th Century, parish churches throughout Europe were recording the birth dates of women and children, and families were observing the dates with annual celebrations. It was around this time, the birthday cake reemerged, now topped with candles.

The custom of a birthday cake was observed for a brief time in ancient Greece. It reemerged among German peasants in the Middle Ages, and through a new kind of celebration, a Kinderfeste, held specifically for a young child, or Kind. In a sense, this marked the beginning of children's birthday parties, and in many ways a 13th Century German child received more attention and honor than his or her modern day counterpart.

A Kinderfeste began at dawn. The birthday child was awakened by the arrival of a cake topped with lighted candles. The candles were changed and kept lit throughout the day, until after the family meal, when the cake was eaten. The number of candles totaled one more than the child's age, the additional one representing the "light of life." (Belief that the candle symbolizes life is found throughout history. Macbeth speaks of life as a "brief candle," and the proverb cautions against "burning the candle at both ends.") The birthday child also received gifts and selected the menu for the family meal, requesting his or her favorite dishes.

Our custom of making a wish and blowing out the candles also stems from the German Kinderfeste. Birthday candles were to be extinguished in a single breath, and the wish, if it was to come true, had to remain a secret.

German birthday lore has one custom we do not observe today: the Birthday Man, a bearded elf who brought well-behaved birthday children additional gifts. Although the Birthday Man never achieved the stature of Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, his image could  be purchased in the form of a German doll until well into the early part of the 20th Century.

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