Happy Anniversary to us!
Apr. 30th, 2002 09:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravencallscrowsYup. Today's the anniversary of when ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
damashita and i got married. In atypical style, we "celebrated" it with a difference of opinions last night *sigh*. Hopefully tonight will be a bit more placid.
Why 30 April? Well, in ancient Gaelic tradition (likely also in the Brythonic ones as well, but i haven't investigated these), the festival of Beltaine starts a month said to belong to the Gods, so people didn't celebrate weddings during the month. Contemporary Gaelic culture still observes the holiday of Beltaine, albeit not necessarily in the same way, and fixes it at 1 May on the calendar, although there are some differences cited in local practices whether the observance begins at sundown on May Eve (this seems to be the consensus in most of the areas which still have a significant concentration of Gaelic speakers- the Islands and western Highlands), or is simply observed on the calendar day 1 May (many of the areas where Gaelic is less prevalent, and which seem to have in many ways modified the traditions to suit contemporary life a bit more conveniently).
It has been postulated by Sheila Livingstone, in her book Scottish Traditions that this is why June is typically the month most associated with weddings, but, as a number of Livingstone's other conclusions are seemingly drawn from tenuous links to tradition- and not always Gaelic ones- the verity of this assessment is less that well substantiated.
Anyway, since May was out, and we didn't want to wait until June, the end of April was ideal for us. I still haven't regretted it ;-)
damashita and i got married. In atypical style, we "celebrated" it with a difference of opinions last night *sigh*. Hopefully tonight will be a bit more placid.Why 30 April? Well, in ancient Gaelic tradition (likely also in the Brythonic ones as well, but i haven't investigated these), the festival of Beltaine starts a month said to belong to the Gods, so people didn't celebrate weddings during the month. Contemporary Gaelic culture still observes the holiday of Beltaine, albeit not necessarily in the same way, and fixes it at 1 May on the calendar, although there are some differences cited in local practices whether the observance begins at sundown on May Eve (this seems to be the consensus in most of the areas which still have a significant concentration of Gaelic speakers- the Islands and western Highlands), or is simply observed on the calendar day 1 May (many of the areas where Gaelic is less prevalent, and which seem to have in many ways modified the traditions to suit contemporary life a bit more conveniently).
It has been postulated by Sheila Livingstone, in her book Scottish Traditions that this is why June is typically the month most associated with weddings, but, as a number of Livingstone's other conclusions are seemingly drawn from tenuous links to tradition- and not always Gaelic ones- the verity of this assessment is less that well substantiated.
Anyway, since May was out, and we didn't want to wait until June, the end of April was ideal for us. I still haven't regretted it ;-)
