Customs and traditions around marriages In the different cultures of the world they are very different. In some cases they are based on superstition and although in general we consider them silly, we do not want to "provoke" the destination and as a fun we usually let ourselves go and include in our attire "something new, something old, something borrowed and something blue". If we think about it, maybe we can understand a case that still occurs today: Ghost marriages with dead or among dead in China.
Chinese ghost marriage is named after " Minghūn " which means "spiritual marriage." A " Minghūn " is that wedding in which one or both parties have died. It is based on traditions and superstitions that, although they have no place in the mentality and customs of the Current China , in rural areas it is still practiced.
Ghost marriages in China
Chinese parents have "the duty" to provide a marriage to their children, it is in the fulfillment of this ancestral custom that we find the ghost marriages Chinese These are given for several reasons:
1. The first one is that the boyfriend has died. In this case the bride can choose if she wants to marry her dead fiancé or not. At the wedding the groom is represented by a white rooster, but the women think it over before agreeing that, if they accept this type of phantom marriages, they must make a vow of celibacy.
2. The second is to include a daughter in a lineage. Deceased single daughters can not be placed between the tablets of the ancestors and only if they are married will they be honored properly. That's why some parents organize ghost marriages and so his daughter will be among those of her husband's family.
3. It has also sometimes been used by women who have not wanted to marry and have thus managed to stop being "a shame" for their families.
4. If the deceased was a male, the parents could find him a living wife so that he could continue the lineage. Once this type of ghost wedding was done, a child could be adopted, usually related to the family, so that the family branch could continue.
5. If the deceased was an older brother, a girlfriend was also sought for him, whether deceased or alive, to allow his younger brothers to marry. According to ancient Chinese customs, no brother could marry if he had not done it before him in age.
6. There are also documented cases in which ghost marriages they have been made by express wish of the "spirit" of the deceased who has communicated through a medium.
In the first decade of the 21st century, there was a resurgence of ghost marriages in China due to the great mortality among young miners in some regions of China. In those rural areas, the parents, carried away by all those old superstitions, bought corpses of girls from body thieves to marry them with their dead children. In this context and due to the business involved in the sale of deceased women, a man named Song Tiantang who had murdered six women to later sell their corpses.
In France there is a legal figure known as "Posthumous marriage" in which a dead person and another alive can get married if special circumstances arise. It was established during the First World War to legitimize children whose parents died at the front without having had time to marry their mothers. It was used again during the Second World War and also after the disaster of the break of the Frejus Dam in 1950. Applications for posthumous marriage are now received every year, many of which are accepted if the requirements demanded by the Law.
Did you know the ghost marriages What are they doing in China? Do you think they have some kind of justification at present? If you have been interested in this post, you may want to know how is a traditional Chinese wedding reading the post: Traditional Chinese wedding | 10 strange customs before marriage .