(A) the basic ceremony of the Han wedding
Six gifts: accept the recruitment → ask the name → Naji → accept the recruitment → invite the meeting → welcome in person.
This is a classic six-ceremony structure, but it has been simplified from time to time in later generations. In addition, on the basis of the "Six Rites" link, auxiliary ceremonies and miscellaneous customs are added, such as urging makeup, sending makeup, and vacating the room. A few pre-marital rituals have been simplified, such as Family Gifts written by Zhu in Song Dynasty, which combined the six rituals into three instruments: accepting gifts, accepting coins and welcoming relatives because of the prevalence of customs.
Wedding structure: pre-wedding ceremony → formal wedding → post-wedding ceremony.
A complete wedding:
Prenuptial ceremony → Ask the name → Najib → Receive → Invite.
Wedding reception → bride ceremony → wedding ceremony → the rest of the ceremony.
After the wedding ceremony (the ceremony of becoming a woman), the woman sees menstruation → menstruation loves her → Mother feeds menstruation.
Three Books: When it comes to marriage in later generations, "Six Rites" often appear together with "Three Books", which is not the content of rites;
Letter of engagement: that is, the letter of engagement, which is created by both men and women. When Najib (Guo) is used. Gift book: Gift book is a list of gifts, which lists the types and quantities of gifts in detail. When receiving the letter of credit (gift), use the marriage certificate: that is, the book for marrying the bride. For picking up the bride on the wedding day.
Interpret the basic ceremony of Chinese wedding;
Prenuptial ceremony
The man sent messengers to the woman's house to propose marriage. Adopt geese as gifts.
There are three symbolic meanings of giving a goose as a gift:
1. Wild geese are migratory birds, flying south in autumn and returning north in spring. They come and go sometimes and never lose the season. Wild geese are used to symbolize the constancy of men and women.
2. Wild geese are things that follow the sun, and they move in an orderly way. During the migration flight, the geese line up, the strong geese lead the way, and the young geese and the weak geese follow behind, never crossing. Applying this principle to marriage, young and old will get married in order, not exceeding the order.
3. Geese and female geese get married, symbolizing loyalty and growing old together (later developed, lamb, white goose, acacia, glue paint, etc. Also used as a gift).
After obtaining the consent of the man's wife, a name-asking ceremony will be held to predict whether he will get married or not and whether he will be good or bad after coming back. Ask the name is generally the name of the woman, rank, date of birth, etc. , development to later generations is called change Geng post. This process is also equivalent to engagement. As the old saying goes, "Men call their names and women call their words", and women's names cannot be easily revealed. The meaning of asking names is obvious.
The purpose of Najib's roll call is to prepare for Najib. In Li Yishi's Soul, it is a good omen to return to the temple, and then an emissary is sent to inform it. In other words, after the man asked the name, he used tortoise shells to predict the birth, both men and women. If he gets a good omen, he will predict the auspicious result and send an emissary to the woman's house to report the good news. Later people call it betrothal, and the ceremony is as good as acceptance. After Najib, the marriage was officially confirmed. Later, the people changed Najib's name to marriage. It is to combine the zodiac signs and birth dates of both men and women to see if the zodiac signs are compatible and whether the eight characters match. Najib uses geese just like Nacai.
Requisition and gifts are often the key to six wedding ceremonies. The book "The Wedding of Yi Li the World" said: "The success of the levy also made the messenger pay money to get married." It means that the sender received money for the wedding, so it is called a big gift or a big gift. After the conscription, the marriage entered the formal preparation stage.
The dowry of the Zhou dynasty "when a woman marries a wife, money is pure silk, and there is no difference between five and two." The scholar-officials tied silks with Meng Xuan, and the emperor gave them a big hug. " The dowry of Zhou system takes its symbolic meaning, and it doesn't value economic value like later generations. Money, which means colored silk, is the origin of the so-called "bride price" in later generations. It can be seen that the bride price in the pre-Qin period was very simple, and the literati only used five or two colored silk and a pair of deerskin. But in later generations, the connotation of bride price will be much more practical, including ornaments, silks and satins, livestock or cash. The bride price began to become a status issue, which was difficult to decide. At this point, the symbolic meaning of Zhou Li's bride price has changed to take justice for profit. There are nine kinds of bride price in Sui and Tang Dynasties, including Albizia Albizia, Jiahe, Ejiao, Jiuzipu, Zhu Wei, Shuangshi, cotton powder, longevity flower and dry lacquer. I wish the couple a long-term love.
The wedding ceremony is decided by the man, and then the woman is officially informed. In the evolution of weddings in later generations, there were three kinds of ceremonies: urging makeup, sending makeup and making room, which were not recorded in the documents of pre-Qin dynasty. The groom kissed his father's son, took the wine, gulped it down, and then set out to marry his bride. The woman's parents held a banquet in the temple and greeted her new husband outside the door. My husband made a gift out of goose. Give way to each other, and the son-in-law will worship again.
In the Zhou Dynasty, couples were greeted by carriages, and in the Song Dynasty, couples gradually began to sit in sedan chairs. After leaving the temple gate, drive the bride. When the bride gets on the bus, she must personally hand in the lead rope for getting on the bus and take good care of her. Then the groom drove the carriage by himself, let it turn three times, and then gave it to the coachman to ride in another carriage. When you get to the door, the groom will get off and wait. After the bride's car arrived, the groom led the bride into the house, and the bride entered the house, and the prenuptial ceremony came to an end.
Zheng wedding
Formal wedding refers to the formal wedding ceremony held after the bride is received by the man. There are several main items, such as paying homage to the church (there is no weekly stupa ceremony), washing, sitting at the table, getting married with the supervisor, and setting more meals.
There is no ceremony for newcomers to worship the church. Sima Guang's "Documents": "In ancient times, couples paid homage without documents. Today, the ancestors of the secular world saw it, and it is reasonable to pay homage. Cannot be abolished. " It can be seen that the memorial ceremony in the Song Dynasty has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. In addition to paying homage to husband and wife, there were also ceremonies to pay homage to heaven and earth in the Yuan Dynasty, that is, first to pay homage to heaven and earth, then to pay homage to parents in-laws and finally to pay homage to husband and wife. This is a three-worship ceremony handed down today.
Wash your hands and face before the couple takes their seats. The traditional etiquette of the Han nationality attaches great importance to the sense of cleanliness. The weekly toilet etiquette is to use the card to wash together.
After the wedding, the newlyweds sit opposite each other, which is called sitting opposite each other. The position of the opposite seat, male in the west and female in the east, means that Yin and Yang are gradually merging.
In the same prison, "in the same prison" means that newlyweds eat the meat of the same livestock. Couples get married when they drink when they make a cup. Note-they just exchange cups instead of drinking hand in hand like many misleading costume dramas. The original meaning of combination is to break the melon in half and then combine it into one. Divide into two parts and hold the wine separately. At first, when we used melons, it was bitter. It must be bitter when we use it to hold wine. Being split in two symbolizes that the new couple will be combined because of the wedding. Therefore, the drinking of wedding wine by husband and wife not only symbolizes that husband and wife are one, but also contains the profound meaning of letting the bride and groom share joys and sorrows.
This is the most social part of the wedding. This is an essential ceremony for every newly married couple when they get married. The ceremony of tying the knot has been passed down to later generations and developed into a feast. "Eating a wedding banquet" has become the abbreviation of folk wedding. The banquet is simple and complicated, but the main significance lies in the recognition of marriage by relatives and friends.
This is the so-called bed closing ceremony, officially becoming husband and wife. The bride's undressing is accepted by the waiter, the groom's undressing is accepted by the waiter, and the groom takes off the bride's hijab. At this moment, the waiter came out with a candle. Since then, both men and women have officially become husband and wife.
wedding ceremony
After the wedding ceremony, the bride becomes a member of the man's family and blends in with the relatives of the man's family, so it is also called "adult ceremony". There are four main ceremonies for becoming a woman: meeting menstruation, feeding menstruation and entertaining menstruation.
When a woman sees her uncle's wife, she calls her husband's father "uncle" and her husband's mother "aunt". The next morning after marriage, the bride got up early to take a bath. The bride waited outside her in-laws bedroom door with bamboo utensils full of dates, chestnuts and other things. Sheng has the meaning of "jujube" getting up early, "chestnut" trembling and "nurturing" inspiring.
According to the Book of Rites, the gift of "wife to aunt" comes after "seeing aunt". The bride personally serves her in-laws for dinner, and after her parents finish eating, the woman symbolically eats the leftovers of her in-laws to show her respect and filial piety. After that, there was a ceremony of "making love with menstruation". Another way of saying it is "love for aunt", which means that on the third day after the bride enters the door, she will cook in the kitchen to love her aunt. To show that from now on, I will host feedback to do my filial piety. In the Tang dynasty, there was "the third day, cooking instead of me, washing hands to make bride soup;" I concluded that it was not my mother-in-law, the first time my sister-in-law tasted it. This custom should be the evolution and development of later generations.
After her aunt married her, her in-laws gave her food and mouthwash, and also rewarded her with a "gift" to show the care of her elders.
A kind of offering: first, the host gives the wine baron to the guest, which is called "offering"; The second time, the guest retaliated, called "Yao"; After the host pours the wine into the wine bowl or glass, he drinks it himself first, and then advises the guests to drink it with him. This is called "reward". Together, they are called "gifts". In the process of "sacrifice", there are steps to wash the knight. My father-in-law washes knights in the south and my mother-in-law washes knights in the north.
Don't step down after the gift is finished. "Book of Rites" records: "Jue Ming, aunt uncle * * * gave his wife, aunt first descended to the western level, and wife descended to various places to take her place." According to the old residential structure, the West Stage is the guest seat and the Ji Lang Stage is the main seat. The bride came down from the stage in Ji Lang, indicating that she was given a room to act as a housekeeper's agent. The ceremony of seeing a married woman in the temple is "the bride worships her ancestors"-three months after marriage, the in-laws took the bride to the ancestral temple on a certain day to show that the woman has officially become a member of her in-laws. Since then, the ceremony of becoming a woman (and the "wedding ceremony") has been completed.
Discrimination between "Married Woman" and "Married Wife"
"Being a wife" means being a man's daughter-in-law, and "being a wife" means being a man's wife. Confucians in Qing Dynasty, such as Zheng Zhen, made a detailed textual research on wedding etiquette and appellation, and analyzed the possibility of engagement and dissolution from the perspective of literature, aiming at exploring: When was the marriage relationship established? Because they were concerned about a very serious social problem at that time: "being a maid." "Chastity" is the so-called "widowhood". When a woman is engaged, her fiance dies before she walks in the door. Can such a "married woman" marry another husband's family? Or do you have to marry and raise your in-laws and adopt a child to inherit the incense? Buried with that man? Basically, people who advocate virginity say that they think being a wife is more important than being a wife. Once engaged, marriage is established. Opponents insist on the fact that marriage is established and menstruation's daughter-in-law relationship is established. In the Qing Dynasty, a large number of archways won prizes for "keeping the virginity of women". According to textual research, the title "husband" only appeared on the wedding night. At that time, the husband entered the woman's bedroom and the woman said, "If it is not my husband, how can I enter my room?" In other words, the word "husband and wife" cannot be established until the ceremony of intimacy, toast and real-time "combination". Since there is no reality of husband and wife, how can there be widowhood, martyrdom and in-laws? (Excerpted from Taiwan Province scholar Zhang Shou 'an's My Study of Rites in Qing Dynasty, the fifth edition of China Thought History Research Newsletter)
In fact, until the Song Dynasty, women still had a considerable position in marriage. According to the logic of later generations, if the bride dies before suing the temple, she can only be buried in her family. Since she can't be a member of her husband's family, isn't the custom of "being a virgin", "being a martyr" and "supporting her husband's family without marriage" very unreasonable? Didn't the "chastity memorial archway" popular in Qing Dynasty become black humor? This bad habit is actually a variation of China culture, which does not conform to Chinese etiquette.
(2) Two typical wedding styles of Han nationality.
Although the structure of the wedding ceremony remains stable, the change is quite obvious in the evolution of the wedding style. Therefore, this paper will classify them according to two styles:
The "Prototype" of the Wedding System in Zhou —— Solemnity and Elegance
Peach blossoms are in full bloom, colorful and fiery red. The girl is going to get married and be happy at her husband's house. -"The Book of Songs Nan Zhou Yao Tao" Zhou-style wedding inherited the Shang Dynasty from ancient times to summer, merged in the Western Zhou Dynasty, where rites and music were founded, and carried forward in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. It is a gentleman's demeanor. It was stable when all ethnic groups in China finally formed the Han nationality. It has been a blueprint for Chinese weddings for 3,000 years and eventually became a brilliant cloud.
At that time, weddings were called faint ceremonies. No extravagant bride price, no extravagant ostentation and extravagance, no noisy banquet. The most important thing is the righteousness of husband and wife and the grace of marriage. I don't think this is a joke. At that time, the faint ceremony was simple and clean, and there was no complicated thing like a bridal chamber. The husband and wife "ate in prison and got married and died" and then entered the bridal chamber hand in hand. The next day, I visited my aunt and uncle. Three months later, I reported to my family temple. Since then, the bride has been formally integrated into the in-laws family. At that time, the faint suit was not a red item that people misunderstood now, but a dignified dark black dress (dark black, the red color in black, according to the five elements is the most sacred color symbolizing the sky). The married woman didn't put out the candle for three days, thinking of her distant daughter in the Ying Ying fire; In-laws did not give music for three days to comfort the bride who missed her parents ... The whole ceremony was quiet and serene. But there is a shocking power in the quiet and meticulous ceremony-perhaps this is the power we want to capture today. The quiet and beautiful ceremony that began at dusk reflected a long-lost breath of civilization-it was a pure, beautiful and great Han civilization, pointing directly at people's hearts.
"Developmental" Future Wedding-Celebration and Liveliness
Rush to lay a hundred accounts and wait for the seven fragrant cars. Sorry, I haven't finished my makeup yet. Dongfang wants Xiao Xia. -Tang Luchang's "Princess Yun 'an's Poem on Making Makeup" refers to the wedding of the later Han Dynasty, which gradually evolved on the basis of Zhou marriage. Many of them come from non-Han wedding customs and etiquette, and there are many variations, so they are called "developmental". It is unknown when the wedding will be held in the daytime, perhaps because of the war after the Han Dynasty and the unsafe night, or because of the habit of being infected by Hu customs. Later, the wedding ostentation and extravagance gradually became bigger and longer, so the celebration ceremony often lasted for one day.
Different from the weddings of later generations, from the pre-Qin dynasty to the Han dynasty, the female father greeted the bride outside the door with heavy etiquette, not to mention making things difficult for the son-in-law. Tang's "Feng Shiwen and Jian Lu" has six volumes and five clouds: "Modern marriage has obstacles, but the husband is just fanning the candle." Since the faint ceremony had guests and a wedding banquet, the secular celebration atmosphere of the wedding has gradually expanded. The atmosphere of wedding celebration is the normal state of life, and it is also influenced by the customs in various parts of China. Hu custom wedding is more festive, and later many miscellaneous customs of wedding, such as making a bridal chamber, are all wedding customs of Qidan. Opposite the brazier, from Manchu. According to Zhou Li, there is no hijab at the wedding, but the red hijab has become a symbol of secular wedding. At the wedding, there is no joy, no booze, no ceremony, only one seat is reserved for the bride and groom. In later generations, banquets for all guests have become an indispensable part of weddings, and noisy rooms have also become reserved programs. Perhaps, the wedding we are more familiar with is: one worships heaven and earth, the other worships Gaotang, and the husband and wife worship. ...
Looking at the above two traditional wedding modes of the Han nationality, it is not difficult to see that the history is long and the territory is vast, and the degree of cultural gene variation is naturally not small. After all, there are no ethnic groups without communication on earth. In the development of weddings, China people's wedding utensils have absorbed the customs of many foreign nationalities. After many active and passive inter-ethnic exchanges and many ups and downs of national luck, Chinese weddings have slowly changed in a long time. Intriguingly, from the revision of ritual books in past dynasties, we can see the attitude of the ancients towards this phenomenon: preference for the Zhou ritual marriage system and tolerance for the secular marriage system. Therefore, ideals and secularism are not contradictory, and each has its own market. This may be one of the characteristics of China culture. The ancients have given appropriate treatment methods and do not require unity. Today, we propose to restore the traditional wedding ceremony. As a writer, frankly speaking, I prefer the weekly wedding, but I don't criticize the couple's choice here. So we will carefully write down the specific plans of these two kinds of weddings in a parallel way. Let people choose what they want.
The wedding dresses of the Han nationality that we are most familiar with today are probably red wedding dresses embroidered with dragons and phoenixes and red hijab. I'm afraid few people know that the Zhou Dynasty more than 3,000 years ago was also the source of Chinese weddings and marriages. The red wedding dress we are familiar with today actually appeared late, and it was not until the Ming Dynasty that it was clearly customized. Color is a reflection of mentality. From the change of wedding dress, we can also see the evolution of Chinese wedding style and even the whole cultural style.