Vestuvės
LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Vestuvės; Piršlybos; Jaunavedžiai; Vaišės; Dovanos; Kraitis; Papročiai; Apeigos; Tradicijos; Šiaurės Lietuva; Etnografija; Anketiniai tyrimai; Weddings; Matchmaking; Newlyweds; Feast; Gifts; Dowry; Customs; Rites; Traditions; Northern Lithuania; Ethnography; Questionnaire research.
ENIn the article there are described the wedding customs of the village inhabitants in northern Lithuania in the end of the 19th and in the 20th centuries. The majority of material presenters are Catholics, only in the district of Biržai some of them are Evangelists Reformers. In the villages of northern Lithuania in the 20th century as in other parts of Lithuania the traditional system of wedding ceremonies and customs changed very much because of the changes in social, economical and especially political life (wars, occupations, deportations to Siberia, village destruction, collectivization). Approximately up to the first Soviet occupation and the World War II in the village there still existed the old model of wedding ceremonies with matchmaking, the wedding itself and returning home. All these parts of the wedding and its separate elements had their peculiar names and peculiar nature. The introduction of the civil registry, propagation of atheism, suppression of national consciousness on a state scale, and the break-up of the village community gradually told on the changes in wedding customs. Little by little the old wedding songs, dances and games were forgotten. Hired musicians who did not know and thought little of cherished for many years heritage of ethnic culture started to lead the wedding course. In spite of the disappearance of many old traditions the modem intelligentsia in northern Lithuania look positively at the still remembered wedding traditions and condemns meaningless examples of kitsch. The main ceremonies of sacral meaning e g. the young couple saying farewell to their parents before leaving to get married, meeting them with bread and salt after the wedding ceremony, lighting the family hearth, humorous ceremonies of hanging the matchmakers, show that the fundamental frame of the wedding ceremonies is still alive. [From the publication]
