“Courtships and dating through cultures and time”
Chapter 1

Sources: http://blog.badonlinedates.com/date-stories-jens-blog/2014/03/fantastic-world-dating-customs.html http://eventective.com/blog/weddings/2008/06/11/worlds-bizarre-wedding-customs/ http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-strange-courtship-rituals.php http://www.everyculture.com/wc/Brazil-to-Congo-Republic-of/Kayapos.html http://www.ticotimes.net/2012/02/17/young-and-in-love-costa-rican-couples-make-a-scene -Polterabend is a German pre-wedding tradition where friends and family come together for an informal party. While that may not seem odd, what they do at these parties certainly is. They break dishes, flowerpots, tiles, toilets, pretty much anything except glasses or mirrors. To symbolize working together through future difficulties, the bride and groom must clean everything up. Due to the need to replace all the broken goods, I suspect that German sellers of housewares are quite fond of this custom.
- The Day of the Geese, or Antzar Eguna, is a Spanish tradition in which a greased goose is suspended over water and young men jump from boats and attempt to rip off the head of the goose. This competition serves as a way for young men to prove their strength and eligibility to females. In addition to winning the adoration of young women, the winners also gets to keep the goose. Although this tradition was once practiced all over Spain with live geese, this competition is now only held during the San Antolin festival in Lekeitio, with a dead goose to placate animal rights activists.
- Amish courtship is notoriously secretive. In some communities, fellow citizens don’t even know a wedding is in the works until the marriage is announced in church a few weeks before the big day. Amish sleuths can usually sniff out impending nuptials by poking around in a family’s garden, though. Hot creamed celery is a main dish at Amish wedding feasts, so if a family loads up its garden with stalks, it’s probably about to marry off one of its daughters.
- In the Wodaabe tribe of Niger in West Africa, men are known to steal each other's wives. The Wodaabe's first marriage is arranged by their parents in infancy and must be between cousins of the same lineage. However, at the yearly Gerewol Festival, Wodaabe men wear elaborate makeup and costumes and dance to impress the women – and hopefully steal a new wife. If the new couple is able to steal away undetected (especially from a current husband who may not want to part with his wife), then they become socially recognized. These subsequent marriages are called love marriages.
-Online Dating Dating people online has become an extremely popular custom that has developed as more and more people have figured out the advantages of using the internet as a way of finding love. People of all ages submit to dating online, teens and grownups alike searching for that special person by setting up accounts on online dating sites and browsing through other people’s profiles. On dating websites, singles are provided the opportunity of learning a few things about various potential partners, making their decision of contacting them based on dating profile descriptions and photos.

• In Morocco, the boy’s mother will often check out the girl’s naked body at the public bathhouse, or hammam. Since females wear loose, flowing garments that cover most of their bodies, this is the only way to make sure that she is fit for marriage and babies. When a man is interested in a woman he visits the family home to express his interest. As in most social encounters in the country, mint tea is served. If the girl is interested, she will serve him tea that is sweetened. If not, the tea is served plain – a formal rejection without the sting.
• In Singapore the biggest matchmaker is Big Brother. The government runs the Social Development Unit, an agency whose sole purpose is to match up couples so they can procreate. They host dances and give tips on where to have sex in cars.
• On Taquile Island in South America’s Lake Titicaca, once a couple decides to marry, they must first live together and work side by side for several months. After this trial period, they can either choose to marry or walk away – no harm, no foul, and no bad reputations. Divorce is almost unheard of on this island, where coincidentally the men do all the knitting.
• For young singles in Australia, group dates are much more common than one-on-ones. These laid-back outings give potential couples a chance to check each other out and spend time together without pressure.
• Single men from Korea can be found carrying around their girlfriend’s purses on a shopping trip, following her from shoe store to shoe store at the mall.

• Filing down the pointed teeth in your mouth is a must for boys and girls in Bali. A cleansing Hindu ritual that helps to restrain one’s animal urges, tooth filing is a prerequisite for marriage. In an elaborate ceremony overseen by a Brahman priest, their upper canines are filed down to the level of their incisors, a painful ritual that is believed to rid them of evil tendencies such as greed, lust, anger, jealousy, and intoxication. With those out of the way, the young people are
• In France, daters are more transparent regarding their interest or disinterest. In general, men don’t play hard to get, and they rarely employ the “fade away” method of breaking off a relationship. Bonjour clear intentions, au revoir vague texts.
Afghanistan: Dating is rare in Afghanistan because most marriages are arranged by parents, and schools are separate for boys and girls. The opportunities to meet are rare. Girls have a 7:00 P.M. curfew, while boys have an 11:00 P.M. curfew.
- A very bizarre courtship ritual, practiced in Taiwan up until the 1930s, was discovered through 150-year-old letters of botanical experts at Kew. A tribe called the Atayals was very enthusiastic about head-hunting, literally! The men often used severed heads from their battles to woo the women they coveted. Once accepted, these prized possessions were not promptly removed from sight. They were, instead, kept in open air on a narrow platform, for everyone to see.
In the Scottish pre-wedding tradition of “Blackening the Bride,” The bride is taken by surprise and covered with foul substances, such as eggs, various sauces, feathers, and well you name it…The bride to be, officially blackened, is the then paraded around town, and of course a few pubs, for all to see. Filmed in Fraserburgh and Rosehearty, in the north east of Scotland in 2007. A bride to be is subjected to a traditional ‘blackening’, one of the strangest of all pre-wedding traditions.

• Kidnapping your potential wife was popular in Roma communities for centuries. Today young couples that want to marry against their parents’ wishes will kidnap themselves and abscond, forcing the families to choose between a hasty wedding or permanent disgrace for the daughter.
-In rural Austria, it's not chocolate bon-bons that are the way to a lover's heart; it's apples soaked in armpit sweat. Young women do a ritual dance with apple slices lodged in their armpits. After the dance, each gives her slice to the man of her choice, and he then eats it.
- A weird courtship ritual among the Gypsies of the UK has come under the limelight recently, where a guy grabs a young girl for a smooch, sometimes forcefully so. Unfortunately, the girls don’t have a say in this, or in their own lives for that matter. They are not allowed to approach a guy, or even make a move. These girls, mostly between the ages of 14-21, are generally pulled out of schools by their parents to get married, serve their husbands, and bring honor to their families. Shocking, right?!
- The Tidong are a group of people from northern Borneo with a particularly uncomfortable wedding custom. For the 3 days and 3 nights following the wedding, both the bride and groom are prohibited from using the bathroom. That means no urinating, no defecating, and no bathing. They believe that custom will lead to a long, happy, and fertile marriage. In order to achieve this, the newlyweds are allowed to eat and drink only very small amounts and are watched very closely by family members.
• The Maori people of New Zealand carved tattooed grooves or ta moko in their faces and buttocks to make themselves more attractive to the opposite sex and signal their high social status.

- Armenia-
- The Dai people of China practice an annual courtship ritual called "visiting girls." It starts out with young women sitting together around a bonfire and turning their spinning wheels. A group of men draped in red blankets and playing musical instruments approaches them, and each man chooses a woman to serenade. If the woman of his choice likes him back, she'll take out a small stool from under her skirt and invite him to sit on it. Then the man will wrap her in his red blanket, and they'll do what lovers do everywhere: whisper sweet nothings in each other's ears.
-Bilhar India -It could be the story of your life. Well, the story of many women, as a matter of fact. But these Indian girls know how to save them from the burden of socializing, and still end up with a groom. While the 21st-Century India is still going through its socio-cultural reforms, a small state of Bihar has adopted a strange popular ritual of “kidnapping the groom,” as a way to fight the custom of dowry. The father of a girl, not able to afford dowry for her daughter’s wedding, can simply steal away an eligible young bachelor for her daughter, and wed them off in a traditional secret ceremony straight away, against his wishes.
- Before a South Korean groom can look forward to his wedding night, it is traditional that he receives a beating from his groomsmen. Foot whipping – also known as ‘bastinado’ or ‘falaka’ – involves the beating of a groom’s bare feet with a cane or fish and is said to be a test of the groom’s strength and character.
- In the Surma tribe of Ethiopia, their is a custom in which a girl for some time before the wedding, remove the lower teeth, pierced lip and insert the clay disk in it. From time to time the disc is replaced by a similar, but by a larger diameter. And then the wedding? The fact is though the larger diameter of the disc, the more bride’s dowry, because it symbolizes the drive level of wealth of the bride’s family.

KAYAPO TRIBE IN BRAZIL - The kayapos live in the amazon jungle located in Brazil. They love along the Xingu River in scattered villages. They do not date. Teenage women are the primary candidates for marriage, but will only select a partner that the family has suggested. When married they tend to live in large families. The women are in charge of gardening while the men hunt. The only way the marriage will be finalized and formalized is after the birth of the first child. The kayapos have different norms regarding sex. Some men do not want women to be with anyone else but them. Other men prefer to be more open, they do not mind splitting up and remarrying. This is very common between the kayapos.
COSTA RICA - Couples will tend to hangout in groups of friends when they start to date. Usually this happens because it’s against cultural norms for women and men to be by themselves before marriage. Generally people live with their parents before marriage, so in order to have private time they will go to public places to have private time. Typically when couples are alone they tend to go to the park. This is where they get to make out. When looking for a girlfriend, males tend to look for calm, family oriented, hardworking girls. They do not take a girl serious if they meet them at nightclubs or bars.
MEXICO - Depending on the part of Mexico, they have different dating customs. In the more traditional areas, the males will ask the girls to go on the first date. Usually women tend to wait until being purse by the male. If the guy is really interested in the girl he’ll take her serenata. A serenata is when a guy takes a mariachi to the girls house and a group of guys sing to a song and play the guitar. If the girl comes out while the serenata is playing, she is interested in the guy. If she doesn’t come out she’s not interested. If they go on dates they will go to the movies. The guy is expected to pay for everything.
LATIN AMERICA - Latin men are very possessive and very patriarchal. In Spanish the term would be machistas. Women in the other hand are very submissive. They listen to whatever the guy says. In Latin American countries males pursue women. Women aren’t supposed to pursue males because they will be considered sluts. It would also affect a man’s ego if a girl asked him out on a date. He would automatically think the girl asked him on a date because she thinks he doesn’t have enough courage to ask her. One of the customs of Latin couples when they are on a date is that the male gets wine served first. The women cannot be served wine until the male has tasted the wine.
CHILE- MAPUCHE - Chile is a very conservative, family oriented culture. When a couple first starts dating they must join each family for a day. This puts an emphasis on the family structure, since the beginning. Even though they are very conservative they are allowed to date. Typically the male is extremely taken care by the mother so they aspect that from the girl as soon as they start dating. In Chile women are taught how to take care of the man. The men in the other hand aren’t taught to take care of the women, they are babied their whole lives by their mother until the wife comes along.