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A Ukrainian Wedding Tradition: A Riddle

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Clarissa

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In Ukraine, we have this wedding tradition where somebody steals the bride’s shoe, fills it with champagne, and the groom has to drink the champagne out of a shoe in one gulp.

Can anybody guess what this folk tradition is supposed to symbolize? Like all folk rituals, this one has a very profound meaning.

To give you a hint, I will tell you about another Ukrainian wedding tradition that is much easier to decipher. The guests at a wedding load the groom’s (just the groom’s, not the bride’s) mother onto a cart and drive her to a garbage heap where they throw her into the garbage. This tradition is linked to the first one and is supposed to precede it in time during a wedding celebration.

 

21 responses to “A Ukrainian Wedding Tradition: A Riddle”

  1. charlesrowley Avatar
    charlesrowley

    My guess is that the first event signals that the groom no longer is under any influence from his mother. The second event symbolizes a feudal act in which the groom drinks the blood of his spouse, to signify an unbreakable act of blood-fealty between the two newly-weds.But why does the bride not also symbolically partake of the ‘blood’ of the groom?

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      The first guess is right, Charles. 🙂 But the second. . . It is, indeed, significant that the bride does not drink from the groom’s shoe. Ever.

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  2. el Avatar
    el

    //My guess is that the first event signals that the groom no longer is under any influence from his mother.

    +1

    And the 2nd event signals that the groom is under wife’s influence ?

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      We are going in the right direction but details matter. Why drink liquid specifically from a shoe?

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  3. Leah Jane Avatar
    Leah Jane

    Will the groom always be at the bride’s beck and call after the wedding, IE, wait on her “hand and FOOT”?

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      This is a very interesting analysis but we don;t have the expression “waiting hand and foot.”

      Now let’s think about what a shoe symbolizes. Let’s think Cinderella and the prince’s journey with the shoe, trying to find a right fit for it.

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  4. Evelina Anville Avatar
    Evelina Anville

    Well I’ve always understood the Cinderella story to indicate dowry/lineage. Though she seems poor, the beautiful shoe indicates wealth and/or aristrocatic lineage–all of which the Prince will be able to benefit from (or claim as his own) once he’s married. So perhaps this is some indication of dowry–what the husband is gaining (even as he “loses” his mother. )

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  5. kelly Avatar
    kelly

    Claudia is just playing Cinderella. She’s cooking!

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  6. Riin Avatar
    Riin

    Well… the shoe is a piece of clothing that gets dirty a lot, even from the inside because people’s feet sweat and shoe don’t get washed often, so maybe in that sense it’s a symbolic act of submission and dedication. But also, shoes with holes can’t hold liquids so it has to be an intact shoe – which might mean that he has to see to it that she doesn’t live in poverty, otherwise he can’t “drink the champagne”, that is, enjoy her love.

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      Ah, now we are really going in the right direction.

      Let’s see if anybody wants to take this argument even further.

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  7. Leah Jane Avatar
    Leah Jane

    It’s a symbol of taking her virginity? O_O

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      OK, we are slowly getting there! The shoe symbolizes a vagina. then what does the act of a man drinking champagne from it symbolize?

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      1. Daran Avatar
        Daran

        According to the wiki, Champaign was originally a still Rosé. A red fluid from inside a vagina obviously suggests menstrual bleeding. By drinking it, the groom makes the bleeding stop.

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        1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
          bloggerclarissa

          Very very good, Daran.

          The tradition symbolizes that the man will from now on be nourished from the source of the Great Feminine. The woman becomes the source of his life energy.

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      2. Daran Avatar
        Daran

        Filling in the blanks I left in my original answer (which I’m sure you already did): when the Champagne has been drunk, there is no longer blood in the vagina. The groom has caused menstruation to stop. Thus I conjectured it was a fertility rite.

        Thinking instead in terms of sustenance, it occurs to me that “blood from the vagina” might refer not to menstrual fluid, but to the blood which immediately after birth and before the umbilicus is cut passes within it through the mother’s vagina.

        Combining these ideas, I get the following. At the start of his life, the groom’s mother sustains him, first with blood through the umbilicus which passes through her vagina, then with milk from her breast, then later with the food she prepares for him. When he weds, the sustaining role passes to the bride. Mother is now redundant and is symbolically thrown away. As well as sustaining him with the food she prepares for him, the bride also sustains him with sex and babies, completing the cycle from the vagina he came out of, to the one he now enters.

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        1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
          bloggerclarissa

          “Combining these ideas, I get the following. At the start of his life, the groom’s mother sustains him, first with blood through the umbilicus which passes through her vagina, then with milk from her breast, then later with the food she prepares for him. When he weds, the sustaining role passes to the bride. Mother is now redundant and is symbolically thrown away. As well as sustaining him with the food she prepares for him, the bride also sustains him with sex and babies, completing the cycle from the vagina he came out of, to the one he now enters.”

          – This is a brilliant analysis. You are very smart.

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          1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
            bloggerclarissa

            I want to add that I didn’t get this one my own. Somebody else had to explain the rite to me.

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  8. FD Avatar
    FD

    I don’t know about the Ukrainian version, but in the UK version, the bride’s father presenting the groom with a pair of the bride’s shoes represented a symbolic handover of responsibility for care. Shoes, goIng back to the middle ages have represented care and responsibilty, indenture contracts were often as specific about shoes to be provided as they were about food.

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      In this tradition, the groom doesn’t keep the shoe. He just drinks from it.

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      1. FD Avatar
        FD

        Well, with weddings, generally if it isn’t about money/power it’s about fertility or potency. I get the shoe / body part symbolism but the drinking connection eludes me . Wrong cultural background I guess.

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  9. Steve Avatar
    Steve

    All I can think of is Tom Lehrer:

    I drank some champagne from your shoe, la la la
    I was drunk by the time I got through, la la la
    For I didn’t know as I raised that cup
    It had taken two bottles to fill the thing up

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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