New to the site so apologies if this has already been answered elsewhere. During the 19th century, I have discovered a few weddings and baptisms in my tree that appear to have taken place on Xmas day. I know this would be quie unusual nowadays but does anyone know if it was common practice at that time - pehaps these were tacked on to the end of the Christmas day mass? Many thanks for any replies.
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Thank you Barbara, that's really interesting. I can imagine people who had nothing better to do on Xmas day installing themself in the church for the duration of the day's entertainment. I do hope someone eventually invited them home to share in the wedding breakfast.
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Could it be that workers did not have to work on Christmas Day so no loss of wages and I think for ordinary working people there was a lot less fuss around a wedding than there is these days . Families would probably be going to church together anyway so why not include a wedding / baptism while you're there anyway and no charge on Christmas and Boxing Day I think . I've certainly found several baptisms on Christmas Day on different lines in my research over the years . No weddings yet so far though. Oh and welcome to the forum.
Lizmy avatar is Emily Varndell Andrews,my paternal grandmother born 1891
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I remember reading a memoir by someone who had married on Xmas Day in the early 1800s. He said that because there were quite a few other couples marrying that day, and he and his bride were last in the queue, his father left the church before they married because the pigs hadn't been fed!
OC
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Christmas Day baptisms and marriages were only common in a few city churches, it was not a general scenario.
In most churches there was no increase at that time of year.
Cheers
GuyGuy passed away October 2022
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A lot depended on whether the church did free weddings on feast days, or not. The tradition of marrying at Eastermust surely have something to do with SOME churches/cathedrals performing the ceremony free of charge.
A quick google shows that for a time (50 years or so) St George in the East performed about one-sixth of its weddings on Xmas Day. (No figures for Easter).
OC
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A number of years ago (in 2001) I did some research into the Christmas marriage scenario.
At the time I only had records available up to the middle of the 19th century for around a thousand parishes mainly in rural areas or towns with only a few city parishes.
Though I have read of multiple marriages in some London and Manchester churches on Christmas Day.
I am still interested when this “custom” started and where such marriages took place and would welcome detail of the churches and time period (dates)
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Guy Etchells wrote on Feb 9.....
>>.....there has been acceptance for many years that Christmas day was a very popular day for marriage supposedly because either that was the only day the couple and family had off or because vicars did not charge a fee for Christmas day marriages.
>>After transcribing many thousands of marriages I find that in actual fact there were very few marriages on Christmas day.
I must qualify that statement as the marriages I have been transcribing are mainly up to the middle of the 19th century so if this custom started after about the 1840s or 50s I could have missed it.<<
I THINK I can prove your point, Guy, with some statistics from a particular parish in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.
I have just analysed all the marriages for the parish of Kirkby Malham for a period of 216 years between 1597 and 1811 inclusive, which I have put into a database from an IGI download. There were a grand total of 930 marriages during this period, and guess how many took place on Christmas Day - precisely FOUR!
Of course, this is only one parish, but it is probably fairly
representative.
Curiously enough, one of those four Christmas Day marriages was that of my 5-times gt-grandparents NICHOLAS BRACEWELL and DOROTHY BOWKEN (or BOWKER) who were married at Kirkby Malham on December 25 1947.
Roy Stockdill
Editor, The Journal of One-Name Studies
I did a quick follow up in 2004 with similar results
This may be true in cities but I have still to find proof of it, from
the data I have available December 27 seems more popular.
I have just checked 3810 marriages (parish registers) for the years
1837-1901 and only come across 10 Christmas Day marriages.
I have also previously checked a baptism database (370 entries) for the
years 1730-1740 and find no evidence for it in fact December 27 had the
most baptisms.
In a larger database covering the years 1581-1851 (11327 entries) the
27th was the most popular day again.
I would be interested to hear of any evidence pointing to Christmas Day
being popular for marriages or baptisms.
Cheers
GuyGuy passed away October 2022
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Thank you to everyone who has commented here. Yesterday I found another old thread on here (sorry, I've lost it again now) reiterating what you have all said about people having a day off work and also that some churches offered the service without charge on that date. I'm guessing the reason why there are several of these (one wedding, several christenings) in my tree is because the people concerned were agricultural workers, who might well have had no other day free. They also seem to have had healthy babies for whom there was no big rush to get them christened.
I love OC's story about feeding the pigs and it just goes to show that we can never second-guess what our ancestors were up to or why they did the things they did. I am forever speculating about why people did things on a certain date or at a particular place that perhaps I hadn't expected but I've rarely thought of including the pigs' mealtimes in the equation!
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I had a look on my tree, and between 1764 and 1919 there were 6 marriages on Christmas day, that I have found so far. The final one in 1919 was in a London borough, and the images are on Ancestry - in that church that day they had 8 marriages. Looking back through the register, there were an average of 8 per month, so substantially more for Christmas Day.
http://interactive.ancestry.co.uk/16...0_197777-00031Last edited by ozgirl; 22-09-14, 11:49.Linda
My avatar is my Grandmother Carolina Meulenhoff 1896 - 1955
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Thank you all for your replies. I thought I'd replied earlier to this thread but it seems my post has disappeared so apologies if this now appears twice. My relatives who were either married or had their children christened on Xmas day were all agrcultural workers so it certainly seems likely that, for them at least, it was a question of having only that one day free. I really appreciate all the input from everyone here, it can make a huge difference to suddenly see your genealogy problem through someone else's eyes.
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Just for interest (and to see if I could do it!) I ran a query on all my own family and my One Name Study. There are a total of about 16,000 individuals in Family Historian files (mostly in the One Name Study).
There are 45 Christmas Day marriages that we know of. Of course there may be others which I only have Q4 in the GRO Index for.
The marriages are in many areas of the country including London, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.
The dates are from 1813 to 1921 (I asked the query for all between 1700 and present day)
In contrast there are only 18 marriages on 24th December.
Anne
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Thank you for your comments Guy; if it's any help to your research my Xmas wedding couple were EDWARD JOHN BOUNDY to ELIZABETH HERD, married on Xmas day 1888 at the parish chirch in Davidstowe, Cornwall by banns. If there's any more info that would be helpful just let me know.
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