Seasonality of Marriages in Hungary: Church Rules and Local Customs
Seasonality of Marriages in Hungary: Church Rules and Local Customs

Summary/Abstract: According to the ethnographic research in traditional Hungarian society the customary time for marriages was the late fall and the end of winter. Although this norm is widely known, nevertheless it does not correspond to the results of local studies in historical demography and does not fit the patterns identified through the analysis of official statistical data on marriage seasonality. There were at least half a dozen such regional patterns in traditional Hungarian society and these were defined much more strongly by religious denominations than by a connection to agriculture. The formation of regional seasonality patterns was also influenced by the level of urbanization and literacy, by the strength of traditional mentality, and of course by social and occupational stratification. The author is working with vital statistics/parish register records, which represented the real actions. He contrasts the figures representing the marriage movements and the beliefs/norms in the collective memories about the timing of the marriage picked up by ethnographers during their fieldwork. The weight of the work is on the processes but it also depicts the contrasts between the norms contained in the collective memories and the activities.

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