Christmas weddings are understood by many genealogists and family historians to have happened more frequently than weddings on other days. Others say this is simply not true. Surprisingly little in the way of actual research appears to have been done on the subject. Do we just notice a Christmas wedding between our ancestors more than we notice one held on a more ordinary day?
Why would anyone marry on Christmas Day?
These days, no one would really consider getting married at Christmas. Churches are busy, friends would be unlikely to attend as they would be visiting with their family, finding caterers would be horrendously difficult…but go back a century or two and things were very different.
In the days before trade unions were formed and worker’s conditions were improved, it was rare to get more than one day off each week. People worked extremely long hours and often had only Sundays for themselves. The only time of year when people knew they would have two days in a row off was at Christmas. Christmas day was a day off to attend church. However, the next day (Boxing Day or St Stephen’s Day) was one of the four bank holidays for the year from 1871. This meant that there were always two days off. This often also allowed people the luxury of travelling home if they’d been working away, so it may also have been the only time of year for many families that they could all be together. Therefore the rumour of multiple Christmas weddings makes logistical sense.
It is also said that ‘batch weddings‘ were often offered at Christmas, especially in poorer areas. This was to encourage people to marry – the cost could otherwise be prohibitive at several shillings. There does not appear to be much in the way of documentary evidence to support this practice, although reports of local churches doing it can be found occasionally in the newspapers.
What about Christmas weddings in my family tree?
I have long believed that Christmas weddings were in fact a ‘thing’. From the earliest days of my interest in family history, I have noticed what seemed to be more frequent than expected marriages on that date in my tree. I wish I could run a report to analyse my tree for occurrences of that wedding date (maybe this could be assigned as a holiday project for a younger family member to get them into genealogy!). However, I knew if I took a quick look I’d have no trouble finding some. Bingo! Within five minutes I had found my great grandparents Frederick Seal and Rose Davies. They married in 1902 at St George, Hockley, Birmingham. This church is a major one in my paternal family tree.
I didn’t need to look much further to find that Fred’s uncle Thomas Pearsall married Elizabeth Adcock on Christmas day in the same church in 1889.
Checking the marriage registers for several years revealed that Christmas weddings are not a myth. At least not at this church or in this era. Away from the Christmas period, there was a wedding approximately every week or two. Each Christmas day, between ten and thirteen couples were married there.
When I jumped forward a couple of decades in the same register, the pattern was gone. There were occasional Christmas day weddings but no more frequent, and probably less so than other dates. This rather neatly coincides with the improvement of working conditions, allowing people more freedom to choose the date of their nuptials.
What about your family? Were Christmas day weddings common for your ancestors? Comment below!