Why we do what we do
Members of the Baby Boomer generation have seen new trends come and go. Some replace longstanding traditions and some of the new ones, I’m trying to wrap my head around.
Let’s take baby showers, as an example: In America, the baby shower tradition started in the late 1940s and the 1950s, as post-war women began expecting the Baby Boom generation. Like the bridal showers in earlier eras, when young women married and were “showered” with a wedding trousseau, the baby shower provided the mother and her home with useful gifts for the nursery.
Both the bridal shower and baby shower were girlsonly affairs.
Today’s bridal showers are, for the most part, to honor the couple and are attended their friends. Popular gifts are barbeque tools, kitchen and serving pieces and garage tools. Cake or petit fours may not make it onto the menu after burgers and ribs…oh, and don’t forget the beer.
The baby shower has morphed into something called “The Gender Reveal,” when family and friends gather for food and beverage. The crown jewel of the event is finding out whether the expected bundle of joy is male or female.
The key to a successful Gender Reveal is the couple keeping the baby’s sex a secret until the party,
Jenna Karvunidis is credited as the "inventor" of the gender party reveal. For her, it was through a cake., according to her blog. "We had a knife and we cut into the cake all together and we all saw the pink icing at the same time, and found out that we were having a girl," Karvunidis said.
That was in 2008 before Instagram or Pinterest even existed. Karvunidis says she likes cake and wanted to celebrate her pregnancy with her family.
"I mean gosh, I just like to throw parties," she said. "I just thought it would be really fun for everybody in the whole family to find out together."
After the party, she shared her idea and pictures on her blog, “High Gloss and Sauce,” and it was written up by a local Chicago magazine. After that, she started to notice more and more gender reveal parties in the few years after her own.
As the idea began to catch on, genders were revealed in a variety of creative ways – balloons, pinatas, costumed pets, confetti and even fireworks. (Be careful with the fireworks. One gender reveal actually caused one of the raging fires in California.)
Did you ever wonder why cars in a funeral procession turn on their headlights?
Back after the turn of the 20th century, when America made the switch from horsedrawn wagons and carriages to motorized cars, citizens – sometimes because of superstitions – were concerned about breaking through a procession, having no way to tell which cars were part of the cortege.
In 1927, a Washington, D.C., funeral director – Walter A Gawler of Joseph Gawler Sons Funeral Home – proposed the idea of having all cars in a funeral procession turn on their lights as they traveled to the church or place of burial. This became an approved practice in March of the same year.
Cars signaling a procession stopped traffic and many oncoming drivers turned off their engines and stood by their cars to show respect fo the deceased as the hearse, family and other mourners passed by.
One wedding tradition, currently in limbo, is “The First Look.” While some couples hold strong beliefs about not seeing the person they will marry on their wedding day prior to the ceremony, other couples don’t feel as strongly about wedding traditions and use “the first look” as a photo opportunity before the wedding. Whether you believe it’s good or bad luck to see your fiancé before your walk down the aisle, you need to know the history of this tradition before making your final decision.
In the time when marriages were arranged, the wedding was considered more a business deal (desirable brides were usually accompanied by big doweries) than finding one’s soulmate…and if a groom didn’t find his bride attractive, he could walk out on the wedding, thus shaming the bride’s family.
To prevent the groom from abandoning his bride at the altar, the bride’s family kept the couple from seeing each other until their walk down the aisle. This is also why brides wore blushers on their veils. It prevented the groom from seeing his bride’s face until the very last minute.
Today, many couples choose to uphold wedding traditions by not seeing each other before the ceremony. Seeing each other before the wedding is thought to be bad luck by some. Some brides and grooms also like the surprise of seeing each other first in their wedding attire.
Couples that don’t believe in wedding superstitions say seeing each other before the ceremony calms their nerves. This also builds in extra time for a wedding photographer to get some of the photos out of the way.
Besides, I’ve never seen an ugly bride, so no worries about being left at the altar, whether the first look is before or during the bride’s final walk as a single woman.