Genealogy Chat

I've discovered that a large number of my relatives, on many different branches of my family tree were married on christmas day. Is there a reason for this?

Maybe a family tradition,my G Gerandparents married Christmas day in 1800s and I never even knew you could xx

Apparently many people married on Christmas Day because it was their only day off. And we think we work too much lol! Liz x

My aunt and uncle married Christmas Day in 1937. I know not of the reason though. :-) Joy

Like you, Ruth, quite a few of mine were married on Christmas Day and quite a lot of children baptised on that day too. If they worked on the land, perhaps it really was the only day they could get off. No 5-day weeks for them!!

Found this on t'internet: MARRIAGE: PENNY WEDDINGS The following extract from an essay entitled ‘Marrying London’ by Mrs. Belloc—Lowndes in Vol. I of LIVING LONDON edited by George R. Sims and published by Cassell & Co. in 1903, may provide an explanation of the above. Many researchers will have come across Christmas Day weddings among their London forebears. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In almost violent contrast to the West End London wedding is the multiple ceremony as constantly performed east of St. Pauls, and in the poorer quarters of the great city. A batch wedding, as for lack of a better term it may be styled, is quite a feature of slum life, though there are probably tens of thousands of Londoners who are unaware that such a ceremony can be legally performed. Perhaps the batch wedding is only a survival of other and less reverent days, when the notorious Alexander Keith, the incumbent of St. George’s Chapel, Hyde Park Corner, actually advertised his quick performances of the marriage ceremony. On one occasion, in the March of 1754, he married sixty couples, a day’s record before which pales even that of the Rev. Arthur W.Jephson, of St. John’s, Walworth, who has, however, in the course of his ministrations, joined together over 8,000 couples. Mr. Jephson is a hard-working clergyman, and it is his misfortune, not his fault, that he has sometimes united as many as forty-four couples, the same Marriage Service serving for them all, though the actual binding words were in every case uttered separately by each couple. Nowadays [i.e. in 1903] this marrying in batches is discountenanced by some of the clergy, but time was when ‘Penny Weddings’ (so-called because in those days each of the contracting parties paid this modest sum for the privilege of being united in the bonds of matrimony) were encouraged rather than otherwise. The ‘Penny Wedding’ is of the past - a fee of about six shillings being the lowest that is customary at the present time: but not a few still take place in London, particularly at Christmas, Easter, Whitsuntide, and on the August Bank Holiday. The essay from which the above extract is taken is illustrated by two photographs. One depicts an Easter Sunday batch wedding of ten couples at St. John’s, Walworth; while in the other a similar ceremony, with a group of five couples, is taking place at St. John’s, Hoxton. A further reason for marriages taking place at traditional festival times was that this gave the newlyweds an opportunity to spend time together before resuming work after the holiday which was, until modern times, unpaid. Before Sir John Lubbock promoted his Bank Holidays Bill in 1871, Christmas Day and Good Friday were the only bank holidays apart from Sundays. Lubbock’s Act added Boxing Day, Easter Monday and Whit Monday, and created an entirely new holiday on the first Monday in August. For tactical reasons he limited his Bill to bank clerks but always expected that these new holidays would eventually become general. The idea of statutory holidays for working people was opposed by many who believed that the ‘labouring classes’ would spend their non—working hours in drunken and disorderly conduct. Jeanne Baker (The Journal of the East of London FHS, No.45)

I think also some churches didn't charge for a Christmas Day wedding (can't imagine that today lol!) Merry

Thanks all, I was very interested in the 'Penny weddings' as the group of relatives that I was looking at today were married in St Martins in the fields, Westminster, and St Anne Soho. So perhaps they were at one of these mass weddings. Thanks again, Ruth.

My Grandparents were married on Christmas Day 1927. I always thought that this was because of the cost cutting exercise on food and all the relations already having the day off.

Some large Churches, such as Manchester Cathedral, performed marriages for nothing on Christmas Day.Manchester Cathedral in particular, though I'm sure it applied to lots of large Churches, also operated a 'no questions asked' policy, thus enabling underage couples to marry without parental permission. Manchester Cathedral was, of course, a 'peculiar' Church, of which there were many and they operated to their own 'peculiar' ecclesiastical laws. Olde Crone

Olde Crone You have just crushed my thoughts of grandeur - here was I thinking some of my rellies were actually quite posh marrying in a cathedral! Debby

Hi Ruth, my in-laws were married on christmas day in 1942. They said it was the only day they could get married as the war was on and father-in-law was in the army & was free that day. They had there wedding photo, only one, taken in the studios the day before. This christmas day they have been married 63 years. Not bad eh. My husband wanted to follow suite but I was'nt missing my christmas dinner for no one, so we got married New Years Day. Hilary. x