At 04:00 PM 9/25/99 +0200, Paul Spice wrote:
>I remember reading somewhere that "Pagan wedding ceremonies" were still
>taking place in Orkney in the late 19th century, and that a bishop was sent
>there to stop it. If you equate paganism=superstition, it is still evident
>today in, for example, modern wedding ceremonies. Your comment that it moved
I was stunned when I first read about the confarreatio (sp?), the Roman wedding ceremony
for the upper classes. The resemblance between that ceremony and its associated customs and the modern "traditional" Christian religious ceremony and associated customs (e.g., showering the couple with emblems of fertility (them: nuts, us: rice), the groom carrying the bride over the threshold, attendants for the bride, the best man, the veiled bride) is amazing.
>from rural poor to urban poor may be an observation of the conditions of
>inner cities, which, although densly populated, give rise to persons who
>feel isolated, as though living in remote areas.
Aren't the urban poor often transplanted rural poor, if not their descendants?
This has definitely been the case in Europe since early modern times and the
case in the United States for over a century.
Elizabeth Whitaker
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