The wedding vows vary slightly among different Amish affiliations, but regardless of their wording, the promises, which seal an eternal and holy bond, are said in solemn tones. The vows in the Lancaster settlement include these questions:
1. Do you promise … that if he/she should be afflicted with bodily weakness, sickness, or some similar circumstance that you will care for him/her as is fitting a Christian husband/wife? Answer: Yes.
2. Do you also solemnly promise with one another that you will love and bear and be patient with each other, and shall not separate from each other until the dear God shall part you from each other through death? Answer: Yes.11
After making their vows, the couple returns to their seats without a kiss or any other display of affection. The bishop offers a prayer for them and then invites other ministers to offer words of blessing. The service concludes with a kneeling prayer, after which the festivities begin.12
Despite the sober tone of the ceremony, the day is a happy one, with food, fellowship, and fun for some three to five hundred invited guests. In many communities a large noon meal follows the nuptials, after which singing and games continue until an evening supper. The revelry may then drift toward midnight. In a few communities in which the evening activities have turned into boisterous parties, the church has instituted “day weddings,” which end without evening meals or late-night celebrations. Other communities expect wedding days to include a few pranks targeting the couple, such as hiding their horse’s harness, placing their carriage on top of a shed, or putting flour between the sheets of their bed. Tossing the groom over a fence or placing a broomstick across a doorway to see if the bride steps over it (suggesting the new wife “won’t pick up a broom”!) is customary in some locales.13
To orchestrate such a large gathering and prepare two meals for several hundred people without a catering service requires an enormous outpouring of free labor. Each community has its own ways of sharing the burden of preparation. In some areas, the bride’s mother and family are responsible for planning the meal, while someone else coordinates the events on the day itself; in other communities, the bride’s family is more directly involved in all preparations. In Swartzentruber communities the parents of the bride and groom do not even attend the wedding ceremony because they are helping to cook and set up the tables for the meal.
In every community, members of the local district provide food, prepare the facilities, and assume various roles throughout the day—as cooks, ushers, waiters, dishwashers, table setters, and hostlers who care for the horses. Some communities have wedding trailers equipped with propane-powered refrigerators and stoves as well as storage areas for food and utensils. The trailers are towed by truck or tractor to the wedding site. Groups that do not permit such refrigeration follow a schedule of food preparation during the week leading up the wedding day: cakes on one day, pies on another, potatoes peeled on Wednesday, and so forth. Most communities have a customary wedding meal, but the menu varies by locale.14
In her bedroom, a young Amish woman in New York State displays her wedding dress (on the right), which she made. Next to it is the matching dress and shirt she made for herself and her fiancé to wear the day their wedding plans were announced in church. The color and style of wedding dresses varies by affiliation. Karen M. Johnson-Weiner
An evening highlight in some communities occurs when the youth pair up as couples to enter the dining area after the adults have eaten. In some settlements, partners are assigned by the bride, either at the request of the boys or by convenience. In other locales the boys walk by the single girls, each inviting a girl to sit with him at the meal. Guests scan the lineup looking for new romantic pairs appearing in public for the first time. More singing, games, and, in some groups, square dancing follow the evening meal.
Wedding gifts are practical and often include items such as dish towels, storage containers, and canning jars. In many communities, the bride and groom receive separate gifts; a wife might give the new bride a saucepan, while her husband presents the groom with a set of pliers. New couples receive their gifts at the wedding in some communities, but in others they receive them later, as they visit family and friends.
Newlyweds do not take a honeymoon. In some communities, they spend their first night at the bride’s home and help to clean up the house the next day. Some couples move to their new home shortly after the wedding, but in other areas the bride and groom live with parents for several weeks before setting up house on their own. In certain groups, newly married couples visit relatives for several weeks, often staying overnight, depending on the distance.
With the wedding behind them, the newly married hold full adult status as they participate in community life. Soon they will help with the weddings of others, a way of replenishing the goodwill—repaying their social capital debt—into the Amish reservoir.
Visiting, Writing, and Holidays
Thick Social Ties
Visiting is the social glue that binds the Amish community with informal ties of trust and respect. Much of the visiting occurs spontaneously when friends drop by unannounced. Other fraternizing happens at reunions, auctions, quilting parties, work parties, picnics, holiday gatherings, meals after church, weddings, and funerals. Visiting may mean extended conversations after church, stopping by someone’s house on the way to the store, joining in a work party or quilting bee, or catching up during a bus ride. Visitors may arrive without notice to spend the night with friends in another community. Regardless of the venue, visiting is a means of recharging the networks of social capital. It strengthens the bonds of obligation between individuals in the community.
Interpersonal relationships in Amish society are enmeshed in a thick social context, unlike the amorphous ties of cyberspace. Relationships cut across affiliation boundaries, often highlighting similarities such as the same birthday, common hobbies, or shared heartbreak. One young wife who had just suffered a miscarriage welcomed a visit from an older woman in a neighboring church district who had had the same experience. A schoolteacher and her daughter enjoyed visiting with teachers in another community and exchanging ideas for bulletin boards. An older woman waited impatiently for her “twin”—a woman from another settlement who happened to share the same birthday—to arrive for a visit. They had been pen pals for years but had only met face-to-face once, years before. Her husband was looking forward to taking the twin’s spouse fishing.
Visitors make demands, often showing up unannounced for a meal or lodging and expecting their hosts to take them around to visit others in the area. But visitors are not guests in the sense that hosts are expected to entertain them. They often join in the housework—helping to sew, preparing meals, and assisting with farm chores. In return, the hosting family receives news, entertainment, and companionship. And the connections between families and friends are reinforced, benefiting everyone involved.
Two Old Order Mennonite women (center in light dress and far right) join Amish women for a quilting party in an Amish home in a progressive settlement. Shirley Wenger
Extended family reunions, common in Amish society, are frequently daylong events in the summer. In addition, families gather for birthdays, anniversaries, and other special occasions. For scattered families, these events involve considerable travel. One couple in Wisconsin were surprised on their anniversary when their children and grandchildren arrived by chartered bus from another Wisconsin settlement and others came by van from Minnesota, Illinois, and Iowa.15 First cousins, who may number fifty or more in a family, sometimes charter a bus together for a special day trip to a scenic site or state park.
Writing
When traveling is not convenient, letter writing serves as a substitute for visiting. Participants in old-fashioned circle letters add their epistle to a packet that circulates among others with similar interests or needs. Without easy access to telephones or e-mail, Amish people use circle letters to provide information and affirmation for those who suffer similar afflictions, disabi
lities, or accidents. Examples of such “circles” include couples dealing with infertility, open heart surgery patients, parents of children killed in accidents, and individuals with a particular illness such as muscular dystrophy.
Many other circle letter writers focus on shared circumstances—ministers who were ordained in the same season and year, parents of twins, parents who have only boys or only girls, and those with the same birthday, to name a few. Letters flow to relatives or old Rumspringa friends who have moved away. The letters build bonds of care and support that crisscross region and affiliation. Announcements in an Amish newspaper for a new circle letter may invite, for example, anyone by the name of Lavina, men born in July 1956, or girls who enjoy making greeting cards.
A less personal form of bonding occurs among readers who follow the endless stories by correspondents (“scribes”) who write columns for Die Botschaft, the Budget, the Diary, and Plain Interests, all of which have national circulation. Writing in English, the scribes offer detailed accounts of local happenings—church services, accidents, visiting, harvesting, travel, medical problems—as well as wisdom, jokes, and much more, for Amish audiences across the country. Regional newsletters such as Gemeinde Register (Ohio), Die Blatt (Indiana), and the Grapevine (Iowa) keep people informed of events in their area. Reunions, circle letters, and newspapers not only disperse information, but they also build solidarity and confirm identity in Amish communities across North America.
Holidays
Visiting also marks holidays. Depending on the community, the Amish may or may not recognize Martin Luther King Day, President’s Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day. Most, however, observe Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. Their sacred days stretch back to European custom. In addition to Christmas and Easter, the Amish celebrate Good Friday, Easter Monday, Pentecost, Whitmonday (Pentecost Monday), and Ascension Day. Some eastern settlements observe a second day of Christmas on December 26, and many midwestern Amish celebrate Old Christmas, also known as Epiphany or Three Kings Day, on January 6.
Second Christmas, Easter Monday, Pentecost Monday, and Ascension Day are festive times for visiting and relaxing. Amish businesses close on these days, and people dress in Sunday clothes to visit with friends, families, or old Rumspringa chums. Youth attend special outings, and some adults plan van or bus trips to other settlements over these holidays.
Extended families typically gather for a day of eating and visiting during the Christmas season. With families spread across many states, some travel long distances for the gathering. An Iowa grandmother explained that her family had held their family Christmas celebration at her daughter’s house in Wisconsin on Thanksgiving. “Our children and grandchildren left Iowa in two vans to go to Wisconsin. Others came there by train. … All 41 slept in the same house. With 22 grandchildren under 10, there is no dull moment.”16
For more conservative groups, Easter Monday and Pentecost Monday are traditionally days for going fishing. In eastern Pennsylvania, fishing is also a favorite activity on Ascension Day. Traditionally, Ascension Day was a fasting day, meaning families did not eat breakfast, spent the morning in quiet reading and reflection, and went visiting in the afternoon. In more traditional groups this pattern continues, but in more progressive communities, the entire day may be spent visiting. One Lancaster man described it this way: “The day is for visiting and starts early for young and old alike. Uncles, cousins, and families congregate. Youth groups plan outings—softball and volleyball. Charter buses take youth and married folks to other communities 150 miles away to visit [and] relax.” He estimates that on Ascension Day about half of his people “are on the move … and with about six per buggy that’s 1,800 horses clip clopping down the roads. So drive carefully those of you driving Detroit and imported vehicles. We appreciate it.”17
Frolics and Fun
Amish gatherings tap and replenish social capital. Frolics—one-day work projects that blend volunteer labor and fellowship—are a time when a specific family benefits from the communal goodwill accrued in the social bank. Unlike modern societies, which segregate work and play, the Amish often mix them together. Although frolic means merriment, the Amish use it to describe a “work party” that exemplifies the joy of shared labor.
Frolics are commonplace and may involve building a new pig barn, adding a room or apartment to a house, or building a storage shed at a school.18 Other frolics center on cleaning up after a storm or fire, harvesting vegetables, or painting a house to ready it for new inhabitants.
Banter and good humor abound as families gather to help a neighbor move, work crews clean up after a flood, friends gather to fix up a house for newlyweds, or parents prepare a school for a new year. Depending on the project, men and women attend frolics together or separately. Some activities follow gender roles. Shelling peas, quilting, and baking Christmas cookies typically fall to women. When men gather for a construction frolic or to clean up debris after a storm, women come along to prepare a meal.
A barn raising demonstrates the power of cultural and social capital. The work is gendered—men construct the barn while women prepare a large meal for up to two hundred people. Barn raisings are fast disappearing in communities with few farmers. Doyle Yoder
Some communities have a family tradition called “sisters day,” during which adult sisters meet for a frolic in one of their homes. Sometimes they preserve vegetables, quilt, bake, or clean. “Oftentimes,” said one woman, “we take our sewing and just talk while the children play.” Some sisters sew clothing that is distributed to refugees in other countries through Mennonite Central Committee or Christian Aid Ministries. Sister gatherings can provide an opportunity for siblings to catch up with one another’s lives, especially after they have begun helping their own children and caring for their grandchildren.
Peer groups from Rumspringa days often meet in adulthood as well. The women might get together once a month for a small frolic or a quilting party, much like a sisters day. An elderly woman wrote in Die Botschaft, “Last Wednesday our buddy group of six ladies were together at Reuben Lapps. Anna had the table all set with her pretty dishes for a tea party. We had a fun day catching up on each other’s lives.”19 At other times throughout the year, couples who met during Rumspringa may gather for a Christmas singing, a picnic, or to sing for folks who are homebound.
One man we know complained that the women are always “going away too much. They’re just not home enough.” But if the women are away too much, the men are just as guilty. Especially in the late winter and early spring, men are often found at auctions. A favorite place to visit with friends and neighbors, auctions also combine work and play. One might have to wait all day to bid on a washing machine, a horse, or a drill press to get a “good buy.” In addition to seasonal auctions, charity auctions and equipment sales are held throughout the year. These events are filled with chatter, food, the excitement of endless bidding, and the auctioneer’s sing-song call. Auctions, the Amish equivalent of a parade or fair, provide fun, fellowship, and a bit of work throughout the year.
Snowbirds
One distinctive center of recreation and visiting is Pinecraft, Florida, a winter haven for many older Amish “snowbirds” fleeing south, especially those from more liberal affiliations.20 On the outskirts of Sarasota on Florida’s Gulf Coast, Pinecraft first attracted Amish in the late 1920s when a handful of families, mostly from Ohio, bought land there to try celery farming. By 1931 a group of nearly thirty year-round residents, both Amish and Mennonites, comprised the Pinecraft community, and their presence attracted winter visitors—often relatives or friends who went south to visit and enjoy a few weeks of warmer weather. A few of the visitors built cottages, but most were short-term visitors who stayed with locals or in guesthouses. By the winter of 1939–1940, the village included about fifty Amish households hailing from nine states—nearly half from Ohio, followed by Indiana and Pennsylvania.21
In the decades that followed, more and more winter visitors
spiked the growth of the village. By the turn of the twenty-first century, Pinecraft was hosting nearly four thousand snowbirds a week during January and February.22 Ten busloads of Amish, mostly older adults, arrive each week, and then the buses depart with homebound loads. One bus company based in Millersburg, Ohio, delivers 4,000 to 4,500 passengers each year, two-thirds of whom are Amish. Buses from Indiana, Pennsylvania, and beyond also bring Amish travelers. Although some visitors stay only two or three weeks, others have purchased cottages and spend the entire winter, typically arriving after fall communion in October and returning home for spring communion in March or April. Some youth rent condos at Siesta Key and rarely visit Pinecraft.
Pinecraft has more than five hundred small houses and apartments, the majority Amish-owned, but their high prices tilts home ownership toward the wealthy.23 The local Amish church claims some fifty households, but only about twenty are year-round residents. Although the small, permanent congregation is considered a New Order church, it does not have a firm affiliation with other New Order groups. Some snowbirds who were uncomfortable attending the New Order church established two more conservative church services that are held during the winter months.
Pinecraft is in Ordnung limbo because, other than the handful of permanent residents, people are away from the watchful eye of their home districts. The Pinecraft “understanding” permits such things as microwaves, appliances, and air conditioning, but not computers, TVs, DVD players, and radios. Because municipal law bans horses, most people pedal around town in large three-wheel tricycles or bicycles. No one drives a car, although increasing numbers have battery-powered bicycles or three-wheeled motorized carts. Many Amish men do not wear their traditional hats or suspenders, and some make other minor changes to their wardrobe while in Florida.
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