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The STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ-BOLYAI issue article summary
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Abstract: Of all rites of passage – doubled by their respective customs, wedding involves the widest voluntary involvement of its actors to all the steps of the ceremony. Wedding ceremony is important also because it signals the passage between two stages of living. It is marked by the act of marriage itself, the breakaway from the old state, that of youth and the integration in a new one – that of the married.
As it manifests a remarkable complexity, wedding is performed in a suite of highly structured sequences which are baselines for the ceremony and which emphasize many elements of the ritual but also a series of spectacular elements which vary widely based on area, time or even fashion. That is why many researchers of this essential moment in the rites of passage see wedding as a mirror to the collective mentality of a social group.
A field study centered on a later (last decade) wedding ceremony catches a dynamic image of the family life customs, rebuilt, largely of elements guarded in the active and even more in the passive collective memory which speak of the age of certain cultural facts and also about their functional and semantic modifications.
In the complex framework of wedding ceremony, a special place is taken by the sequences which center onto church and onto conduits imposed by the Christian dogma and collective memory customs: youth get-togethers can be held on religious events (learning Christmas carols, going to church, joining the Nicula pilgrimages); a wedding must uphold the Christian calendar and especially fasting periods; St. John’s offers a good moment of asking in marriage; the wedding must be announced three times in church;
From the perspective of Christian religion, the most important moment of every wedding was the holy matrimony when the weds, in the presence of their godparents and parents are joined by the priest, in church. The weds need a preceding Christian preparation as customary. The wedding and all the ceremony outlined by spectacular elements – and the feast which proved not only hospitality but also acknowledgement from the whole community that the status of the two has changed – was not possible without the preceding moment of the holy matrimony.
Salaj County villages guard, at least within their collective memory, many of the wedding sequences which have as starting point elements that are part of the Christian tradition.
Keywords: rites of passage, wedding ceremony, ritual, collective mentality, collective memory, Christian religion, church |
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