The Origin Of The Modern Christian Wedding
Humans are curious by nature and I'm not an exception; amazed by the grandeur
, splendor and richness of the modern Christian weddings; I embarked on a journey of discovery in the summer of 1984 to decode the genesis of the Christina wedding. This adventure took me to the University of Illinois at Urbana, Champaign, 5th largest in the world; here I spent an entire day in the stack of the library trying to locate some evidence in some way.
The mission was unsuccessful and I was deeply disappointed; my disappointment wasn't due to the failure in finding the subject but due to the fact that I was in the center of the fifth largest collection of knowledge in the world yet I could not locate what appeared to be a simple subject at the time - origin or Christian weddings.
I had initially considered the subject to be one of interest to religious historians or even anthropologists, but if my experience in the U of I library was anything to go by; then that wasn't the case or maybe I wasn't looking in the right place. By any means the hypothesis is both interesting and probable as you'll discover.
The origin of weddings seem to date back when marriages were means of uniting two hostile or even warring clans. We could even think of this as trying to resolve a long-standing feud in which several people from each clan have been killed, sheep stolen, barns burned, women carried off, etc. So we seat the groom's clan on one side of the aisle and the bride's clan on the other; if they sat near each other, they'd be likely to fight with each other, maybe even kill each other.
The priest comes out first, so that people will be deterred by fear of God from starting anything. The groom enters first, and even despite the presence of the priest, he is also protected by his best man (and any additional groomsmen): he needs protection in case anybody trying to stop the uniting of the two clans tries to kill him.
The bride enters last, protected by her father (or some powerful male from her clan); she needs this protection so that the groom (or, more generally, the other clan) can't simply abduct her then & there: hold her hostage, hold her in concubinage, rape her, whatever. (In one Scottish wedding I witnessed, the bride's father carried a very real, very sharp dagger tucked into his socks.
I was informed that this was traditional, and that it continues to this day in Scotland.) I am imagining that she is also protected by her numerous bridesmaids, who may not be able to fight well, but they can create enough of a resistance to make abduction problematic. For the same reason of protection, the groom is not allowed to see the bride before the wedding; the danger exists until they are actually married.
The bride arrives at the altar, and her father gives her away and sits down. At this point the bride and groom are directly under the eye of the priest. He marries them off quickly, so that the clans are now formally hitched. They now have a big party at which the new relatives get to mix and bury the hatchet however they can. I believe that these elements persist today because of (as various sociologist consent) the latent functions served by this wedding format - the purposes listed above. There is still tension among families, and they still need to unite after the wedding.
by: Greg Savoie
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