Yesterday it was Valentine's Day: an international day of love. For some people it was a day full of love and joy, for others it was a day like any other day. For me it was a day to look up some untypical love traditions from all around the world.
Love and shame go hand in hand in Scotland
You might be familiar with a traditional Scottish wedding. The groom wears a kilt, under which he may or may not wear underpants. There is one other far more interesting Scottish wedding tradition, involving the bride. A few days before the wedding, the bride gets kidnapped by friends and family. They will make her black and throw all kinds of dirty things (rotten eggs, raw fish, syrup...) over her. When they are finished, they put her on display so all the people from the village can see her. You can imagine that this is quite a humiliating experience, but that's exactly the purpose of this tradition: if the bride can live through this humiliation, she can face any problem life throws at her during her marriage.
You may think that this is an old tradition, but in some villages this tradition still takes place today.
Sharing a wife with your brother in Nepal
Sharing a wife with your brother, Who would want to do that? In some villages in the Himalaya it is a common practice. It's very difficult to earn a living as a farmer in an unfertile area like (parts of) the Himalaya. The farmer needs to do a lot of work in order to make enough money for one family. And because there is so much work that needs to be done, the man doesn't have time to go to the market and sell products. That's where the brother comes into the picture. In this triangle-relationship we have one man working on the land, his brother selling the products and their wife to manage the household and take care of the children.
A love-hut in Cambodia
Many teenage girls think that their parents are a bit narrow-minded when it comes to love and relationships. Girls from the Kreung-tribe in Cambodia never have such a problem. In this tribe, fathers will construct a love hut for their daughters when they reach the age that they start to be interested in boys. In this hut a girl can receive young men, to find out if he is the one for her. They try out a few boys and then in the end they get married to their Mr. Right. It may sound crazy to us, but reportedly girls from this tribe are very happy with this practice and say that it makes them more independent at a young age. And even though many people would not approve teenage girls to be sexually active at such a young age, both the number of sexual harrassents and divorce rates are lower than in many western countries.
Addicted to Valentine's Day in South Korea
In South Korea they love Valentine's Day. Therefore they decided to have a special edition of Valentine's Day every month. It starts on 14 January, when people buy their boy/girlfriend a diary to write down all the lovely memories that will be created in the coming year. On 14 February girls will give a present to the boys, and one month later boys will give a present to the girls. In April it's time for the singles to do something: traditionally they eat noodles with black sauce to feel sad about their loveless life, but nowadays many singles celebrate their independence on this day. This continues every month until we reach Hugs Day on 14 December and start all over again in January.
People say that it were marketeers who invented all these additional editions of Valentine's Day. It may be true that this tradition mainly started as a commercial invention, but nevertheless it's a cute tradition.
