Plain Wisdom (7 page)

W
henever Miriam talks about an upcoming wedding, I know from the joy I see on her face or hear in her voice that marriage is a time of great celebration for the Amish. A wedding is a sign that a man and woman have carefully considered their future and have chosen to join the faith, marry, and raise a family in the same way they were raised. They’re ready to leave the carefree days of youth behind and take on the adult responsibilities of helping the community remain strong.

But many outside the Amish community wonder how couples find each other. Do they date? Do they have to find someone within their district? within their faith?

To some extent it begins with
rumschpringe
(pronounced
room-shpring’-uh
), the Pennsylvania Dutch word for “running around.” Rumschpringe provides a bridge between childhood and adulthood by giving Amish young people extra freedoms and the opportunity to decide if they’re going to join the faith and also to find a spouse. It usually begins around sixteen years old, and although there isn’t an exact time for it to end, parents encourage their children to make a decision about the Amish faith by their early twenties.

But good parenting doesn’t end when young people enter their rumschpringe. I was staying with an Old Order Amish friend a few years ago when an Amish holiday rolled around. Everyone had the day off, and the parents did their best to provide an outlet for the teens to get together and have fun among plenty of chaperones. The parents chipped in and bought
pizza and drinks. Since it was pouring rain, they set up volleyball nets inside a warehouse-type building.

This is typical of the Old Order Amish. The parents want to offer freedom and fun for their young people as well as a safe, controlled environment. One provision the adults make for the young people is to schedule singings every Sunday night at an adult’s home or barn, with a church leader or parent facilitating. The boys sit on one side of a long table, and the girls sit on the other. A church leader or one of the older singles usually begins the song—often an upbeat worship song from the German hymnal—and others will join in. Occasionally someone will sing a song that he or she composed, and others will sing along as they learn the tune and lyrics. After the singing the young men and women socialize over desserts and cold beverages in hot weather and hot beverages in cold weather.

The young people may attend singings in any district they wish, and sometimes adults will organize a singing for an entire region. Parents also host a lot of other youth gatherings: volleyball games, cookouts, bonfires, all with plenty of desserts and beverages. In the winter several parents may work together to host several districts of youth at one of their homes and play games such as Dutch Blitz, Ping-Pong, or a fast-paced card game that is sure to rattle the windows with laughs and howls.

When an Amish couple falls in love, they have a few obstacles to overcome before they can marry. Each must join the faith if they have not done so already. And to do this, they must go through several months of instruction classes on church Sundays, starting in late spring. The bishop or a church leader teaches these classes, and he covers the principles, doctrines, and scriptures that help the young person understand the commitment he or she is making to Christ, the community, and the Amish way of life.

A couple is officially engaged when they announce it to family or friends, but the next obstacle is waiting for the wedding season, in autumn. Most become engaged in the spring so they have time to prepare for a wedding in the fall. In early autumn the groom will go to the bishop and seek his blessing. Even though the parents know about the couple’s plans by this point, the groom will also ask the girl’s father for his approval and blessing.

The couple will then be “published,” which means that the bishop or a minister will announce it during a church service, and then someone within the community will place their names and the date of their wedding in an Amish newspaper—either
The Budget
or
Die Botschaft
, which means “the message.” A couple is usually published in late October.

Although many within the community help prepare for the wedding, most of the responsibility falls on the bride and her family. Since the Amish don’t have church buildings, weddings most often take place on property belonging to the bride’s parents. If the parents can’t accommodate the guests, the wedding may take place at the home of a close relative.

Using the same color fabric, the bride and her mother make dresses for the bride and all the women and girls in her immediate family. The groom’s mother makes matching dresses for the women in her family. Both mothers make white shirts and, if necessary, black suits for the men. The bride’s mother provides two meals on the day of the wedding: a dinner and a supper. But the family has already spent a lot of time preparing for this day, having planted lots of extra vegetables to serve on the wedding day and to stock the new couple’s pantry with plenty of canned goods.

The traditional Amish wedding ceremony doesn’t have flowers, but the groom usually sends a bouquet of roses to his fiancée’s home the morning of the wedding.

Because singing is such an integral part of the couple’s meeting and courting, the Amish enjoy long periods of group singing on the day of the
wedding. They usually sing German wedding songs as well as a few Amish favorites of the bride and groom.

Amish couples don’t register for gifts at stores, as many non-Amish brides do, and there is no bridal shower. Instead, the Amish have two main ways to give gifts: at the wedding ceremony or when the couple visits the homes of family and friends sometime after the ceremony.

Gifts may include nonelectric kitchenware, quilts, canned goods, towels, an outdoor gas grill, a porch swing, a drying rack for clothes, garden or shop tools, or even an express wagon (much like our children’s wagons, only larger and nicer with rubber tires and removable racks). They’re great for walking a load of items to a neighbor’s house. When Miriam’s oldest son married, she gave the young couple several gifts, but the one I found the most fascinating was a feed scoop. She filled it with a homemade trail mix that looked like horse feed. After the big meal was over and the singing began, Miriam set the scoop on a table. The young people had a great time passing it around and taking a handful of “horse feed.”

Following the wedding, the bride and groom spend a day or two helping to clean up. After accommodating from two hundred to five hundred people in an Amish home, the host has loads of kitchen towels, cloth napkins, and tablecloths for the women to wash in the wringer washer and hang on the line—not to mention all the clothes that became dirty or stained during the daylong celebration. Most of the wedding guests come from within the district or nearby districts. Those who arrive by train or hired driver will often stay overnight with friends or relatives who live in the area.

The men have benches and tables to remove from the house and take
to wherever church will be held the next Sunday. Furniture also has to be moved back in place from its storage area, which is often a spare bedroom or a barn.

The Amish handle this workload as they handle all of life. Everyone pitches in: the bride and her siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins as well as close friends of the family (who will themselves need help when they have a wedding in their home). The Amish may not know the saying “Pay it forward,” but they live the lifestyle.

This recipe is used for weddings. It’s one of the candy dishes passed around during the daylong celebration.

My Old Order Amish friend Rachel made an entire wedding meal for me during one of my visits. She invited some mutual friends, and we had a marvelous time! The food and fellowship were outstanding, but I’ve yet to
get comfortable with her sacrifice of time. Of all the foods she’d prepared as part of the typical Amish wedding feast, I saw one I hadn’t expected to like—cooked celery. I like celery, but I’d never eaten it cooked. It was so good I had a second helping. Rachel’s mother even prepared a bowl of it for me to take back to Miriam’s so I could have more at lunch the next day.