The wedding night is an important milestone in life, marking the transformation of a man from a teenager to a leader, from youth to maturity. In ancient China, marriage had the tradition of "marrying a wife and marrying virtue, and taking a concubine".
This stems from the ancient Chinese monogamous and polygonal concubine system, the wife is the second only to the husband in the family, and bears the important responsibility of teaching husband and children and managing the family, which is not only related to the harmony of the family, but also related to filial piety and the continuation of the family.
Concubines, on the other hand, are chosen to enrich family life, so choosing a concubine requires careful consideration.
Whether a wife is virtuous or not has a non-negligible impact on family life. In order to avoid the arbitrariness of marriage, ancient China emphasized the order of parents and the words of matchmaking, and artificially drew a line between the wife and the concubine through the formal wedding procedure to enhance the status of the wife.
As early as the Western Zhou Dynasty, in order to protect the status of his wife, he formulated the systematic marriage project of "Three Books and Six Rites". The "Three Books" are the documents used in the wedding process, including the letter of appointment, the letter of ceremony and the letter of welcome, which is an important written record to protect marriage in ancient times.
The "Six Rites" are the six rituals to be carried out in the whole wedding process from the proposal to the completion of the marriage, which are Nacai, Najib, Najib, Nazheng, Invitation and Welcome, also known as the "Six Rites of Marriage".
Three books and six ceremonies, double best. Na Cai asked for a good relationship and asked both sides of the name and insurance. Good luck is set for a hundred years. The letter of appointment sends the true meaning, and the letter of gift clearly states the appointment banquet. The three books have a total of six rites, and they are heart-to-heart with each other.
I wish to be with one heart and accompany each other forever.
Through divination and fortune-telling, the man picks out an auspicious date, writes this information on red paper, and sends it to the woman's house through a matchmaker to ask for her consent. This stage marks the countdown to the wedding.
On the day of the wedding, the groom wears a dress and leads a welcoming procession of matchmakers and relatives and friends to personally go to the woman's home to greet the bride. After the bride completes the marriage ceremony, she is accompanied by a procession to the man's house to worship the heavens, the earth, and the ancestors, and then is sent to the cave room to wait for the groom to come back and drink the wine together.
In this way, the whole wedding process is complete. At the same time, at this stage, the paperwork for the bride will also be delivered to the woman's home.
The Three Books and Six Rites are symbols of legal marriage in ancient China. At that time, a man had to obtain the consent of his wife to take a concubine, and the power to dispose of the concubine was in the hands of the wife. Therefore, the whole process of the wedding is important, especially the two parts of Nacai and asking for names, which are the main ways to get to know each other.
If these links are not handled carefully, they can lead to tragedy. For example, Duke Lu Huan asked Duke Qi to marry a woman from Qi as his wife, and Duke Qi readily agreed, and held an engagement ceremony.
However, in the end, Lu Huangong died at the hands of his uncle Qi Xianggong because of the green hat incident. Therefore, we must be cautious when dealing with these things to avoid irreversible consequences.
In many costume romance film and television dramas, we often see that the hero and heroine cannot be together for various reasons, but they choose to swear a mountain alliance and a sea oath, make a private life, and finally get a happy ending.
However, the reality is not so rosy. If the woman is powerful, the man may be beaten to death with a stick, and the woman, regardless of her status, may face the end of captivity or sinking.
Even if the woman can successfully become a member of the man's family, she is likely to become the lowest concubine. Lu Zhuanggong, the son of Lu Huangong, is one such example.
When he climbed high and overlooked, he unexpectedly met a beautiful woman named Meng Ren, and he fell in love at first sight and began to pursue Meng Ren. After Meng Ren was captured, Lu Zhuanggong made a bloody alliance with her and made an oath of "Xu Wei's wife".
However, this oath was not fulfilled, but after the death of Lu Zhuanggong, it caused a great chaos of "celebrating the immortality of the father". In addition, Lu Wengong's younger brother, Gongzi, is also an example of violating the marriage etiquette system.
He didn't marry in the media, and he made a lifelong private agreement with a woman whose name and nationality he didn't know, and gave birth to his grandson Yingqi. Gongzi loves this woman very much, so he directly does not marry his wife, but treats her as a wife.
However, his sister-in-law, Mu Jiang, was very angry about this, she did not accept the marriage, and even kicked the woman out of the house. Childe also died in melancholy. These examples tell us that private life is not a good way to solve problems, and it can lead to greater problems and dangers.
We should follow the marriage ritual system and obtain happiness in a legal way.
At weddings, there is an ancient custom known as the "anti-horse ceremony". "Against"pass"Return"After the wedding, the groom returns the horses of the bride's carriage to the family of the bride to show that he will not divorce his wife, and keeping the carriage means that the bride will keep to her husband's house and will not make mistakes.
This custom later evolved into the "Huimen" ceremony, in which the bride and her husband return to their parents' home to visit their parents on the third day after their marriage, which is known as the "Sanchao Huimen" ceremony.