Time in Pinecraft is filled with visiting, and many residents do so over meals in local diners. The back room of Troyer’s Dutch Heritage Restaurant is especially popular. Here non-Amish, Amish, and former Amish share tables—without separate spaces for the shunned. “Ninety-five percent of the people in this room, including the waitresses, can speak Pennsylvania Dutch,” declared an Amish grandfather enthusiastically. Pinecraft provides a site for rekindling old friendships but also for forging new social ties that transcend the geographic settlements up north.
After breakfast, many men fish from the shore at South Lido Beach or in the nearby bay. Others charter deep sea fishing boats, paying $150 or more per person. Older men play shuffleboard at Pinecraft Park or neighborhood courts. Another popular pastime is bocce, and a few people even try their hand at golf. Throughout the day, women gather for quilting bees and conversation. When the weather is warm, young people, families, and even older couples take the half-hour bus ride to the beach at Siesta Key. Few adults engage in mixed-sex bathing, but young people often do.
For adults, the main event during most evenings is visiting or playing games in one another’s homes. In house after house in Pinecraft, people gather around tables to play dominoes or Scrabble or just to visit. Most adults regard Sunday as a day of worship, rest, and visiting, and everyone attends one of the three church services in the morning.
Reflecting on the Ordnung in this cultural limbo, Richard Stevick notes, “If ‘lax’ is not the word for Pinecraft, ‘relaxed’ certainly is.”24 The rule is simply “What happens in Florida stays in Florida.” While technically accountable to their hometown Ordnung back in Ohio or elsewhere, snowbirds and their back-home bishops usually observe a “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule.
A disproportionate number of snowbirds in Pinecraft, noted one Amish man, “are in the entrepreneurial class.” Few farmers can manage a Florida getaway, and few members of highly conservative affiliations show up. For the more traditional Amish, with limited finances and stricter Ordnungs, the wintertime activities of their home communities cannot easily be left behind. Those in more tradition-minded communities who travel are likely to visit family in other communities, not to vacation in the sunny South.
Sounds of Solidarity
Singing is a popular group activity. Families often sing when they worship at home on their district’s off-Sunday. Children attending Amish schools sing during their daily opening exercises and for Christmas programs, family days, and special visitors. Young people’s gatherings and weddings feature abundant singing. Small groups of adults sing to cheer the sick or homebound, and singing also occurs at family gatherings and frolics.
Historically, three features of Amish singing—German words, unison voices, and lack of instrumental accompaniment—have underscored the community’s distinctive identity. Until the mid-twentieth century, the bulk of Amish singing was in German. Since then, more English songs have entered the repertoire in many communities, and now much of the singing outside of church, especially in higher groups, is in English. Nonetheless, German songs remain standard fare in all church-related services as well as in the informal gatherings of the lowest communities.
For many generations, die Youngie have listened to and sung popular songs of their day. One Swiss Amish girl in New York, busy putting together a small collection of English gospel tunes to share with other young people, notes that the group “usually sings in German for at least an hour, and then we might sing in English.” Swiss Amish families, especially in Adams County, Indiana, have also maintained a folk tradition of yodeling.25
Heartland Hymns, a collection of 526 hymns published by a Pennsylvania Amish couple in 2005, was intended for use by family and community gatherings outside Sunday morning worship. It illustrates the growing blend of old German hymns and English songs among more progressive groups. Eighty-nine percent of the hymns are in English, the remainder in German or in both languages. Most of the German songs are translations of English hymns such as “Sweet Hour of Prayer” and “Savior, like a Shepherd Lead Us.” A large number might be classified as country gospel, including “Keep on the Sunny Side of Life,” “The Cabin on the Hill,” “Daddy’s Hands,” and similar titles. Unlike the Ausbund, which includes no musical notation since its unison tunes are passed on orally from one generation to the next, virtually all of the Heartland Hymns have musical scores and shaped notes for four-part harmony. The popularity of this book and ones like it signals a growing use of English songs and harmony in family and informal gatherings among change-minded Amish people.26
Unison singing, however, continues to be the unchallenged standard in church services everywhere. Singing in parts is forbidden for Sunday services because it draws attention to the musical skills of certain singers, divides the unity of the Gmay, and distracts from the meaning of the words. More importantly, part singing may discourage less capable singers and pave the way for special music groups that perform for an audience. Musicologist Hilde Binford has noted that “singing for the Amish has never been a question of singing the pitches accurately or ‘in tune.’ What has been important is that everyone sing, from the special children, including the severely disabled and deaf, to the elderly and infirm. They look to the martyrs who sang on their way to death and believe that all should sing what is in their hearts.”27 Singing not only builds bridges to their Anabaptist past, but it also reinforces the equality and vibrancy of the Amish community.
The church firmly discourages musical instruments, fearing their use would encourage performance, show off individual talents, and distort a true spirit of worship. In more liberal communities, Rumspringa youth sometimes create or hire instrumental bands for their parties and dances. The harmonica and, in some communities, the guitar have become acceptable in private and family settings over the years. Although pianos are not found in Amish homes, some of the most change-minded families use battery-powered portable keyboards to accompany singing in private settings. Acknowledging the use of instruments in the Old Testament, one Amish publication anchors the church’s objections to them on their “notable absence” in the example of Jesus and the apostles. Moreover, “musical instruments tend to distract from the spirit of simplicity which is consistent with New Testament teaching.”28 Accompanied by instruments or not, singing builds group solidarity in Amish society.
Rhythms of Care
Mutual aid runs deep in the Amish soul because church membership carries the responsibility to care for the material and social needs of fellow members. An Amish farmer in Ohio summarizes the assumptions of mutual responsibility this way: “When I am plowing in the spring, I can often see five or six other teams in nearby fields, and I know if I was sick they would all be here plowing my field.” When disaster strikes in the form of illness, flood, or fire, the community rallies quickly to help the family in need. This commitment is grounded in the biblical injunction to “bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2).
The legendary tradition of barn raising illustrates how cultural and social capital is mobilized for a need within the community. When a barn is struck by lightning and bursts into flames, everyone in the church-community knows exactly what will happen in the next three days. Neighbors immediately drop their work to help with the cleanup while the debris still smolders. In the next days about a hundred men will erect a new barn, and dozens of women will prepare food to sustain them. A festive spirit infuses some levity into an otherwise tragic situation. “Barn raisings are for us what the World Series are for you,” one Amish man says.29
The recovery effort swings into action without the deliberations of insurance adjusters, lawyers, and contractors. It happens spontaneously because the barn-raising habit is so tightly woven in the texture of Amish life. Everyone donates their time, knowing that their house or shop may be the next to erupt in flames. This simple but powerful tradition exemplifies the social and cultural capital—the taken-for-granted rituals and values of mutual
obligation that stabilize Amish society.
In more conservative communities, barn raisings are a common response not only when fire destroys an existing structure but whenever a young couple needs a new barn or house or an established family can afford to upgrade. But with the decline of farming in many settlements, some children have never attended a barn raising. “Benefit auctions for medical expenses are the new version of barn raisings,” one member asserted. Although barn raisings are the traditional symbol of communal care, many other forms of mutual aid also flourish. As more Amish move into non-farm jobs and as the community interacts more closely with the outside world, new patterns of aid are emerging. These changes have created different ways in which twenty-first-century children in the various communities are socialized into the Amish way and interact with the non-Amish world.
In large settlements, benefit auctions are widely used to assist members with special needs. These charity sales of donated crafts, quilts, furniture, and food are organized to aid families with excessive medical bills or a special need such as a paraplegic child. Annual benefit auctions also pump funds into organizations that serve the Amish community, such as the Clinic for Special Children in Pennsylvania. In northern Indiana, chicken barbecue or sandwich sales are popular means of raising money for special needs.
Table 13.1. Community Events in the Bloomfield, Iowa, Amish Settlement
From frolics to benefit auctions, the community surrounds its members with care, and in the process recharges its pool of goodwill. In so doing, it distinguishes itself from the broader society, where needy individuals often have to haggle with lawyers and insurance providers to solve their problems. Examples of the rhythms of community life in one settlement (shown in table 13.1) are similar to those in many other communities across the country.
In addition to organized efforts, there are many spontaneous and informal expressions of mutual care. A mother with four young children noted that, whenever she needs a babysitter, she can drop off her children with any one of her three cousins living nearby. Neighbors and extended family members provide endless hours of birthing care, child care, and elder care. This network also pitches in to help with farm and house chores if someone is injured or ill.
Letters and cards to the bereaved or ill—many sent by individuals who are not even acquaintances—also express care. Amish newspapers and newsletters announce “showers” that request cards or scrapbook pages for those who have lost a loved one or are depressed, injured, recuperating from surgery, or struggling financially.30 People of all ages are recipients of such showers, and they in turn often respond publicly. A man who had broken his ankle wrote a letter in Die Botschaft thanking “all the people for sending me encouraging letters, cards, sunshine boxes, groceries, money, gifts, meals brought in, and the boys that hauled the wood.”31
The community also offers emotional support to those who are grieving. In some settlements, following the death of a spouse, parent, sibling, or child, a bereaved woman signals her mourning by wearing a black dress in public settings for several months or more than a year depending on local custom. This rite of dress reminds and invites the community to respond to the bereaved in thoughtful ways. Families who have lost a loved one will typically receive Sunday afternoon and evening visits from friends for several months. Although such visiting gradually declines, it often continues for a year.
Passing On
When a member of the community dies, neighbors and friends are there to support the bereaved family.32 The rites of farewell in Amish society are the ultimate enactment of enduring values—the final statement of surrender and yieldedness to God’s will. They also are the final payout of social capital for the deceased. Although customs vary across the country, all Amish funerals profoundly declare simplicity, equality, community, and separation from the world.33
Funerals are nonworldly in every way. Plain and simple in their ritual enactments, without flowers or elaborate caskets, they are held in a barn, home, shop, or tent at the home of the deceased or a relative, never at a funeral home or church building. They downplay individuality, personal achievement, status, and wealth. Eulogies are absent. All praise goes to God, not the deceased. Regardless of status in life, the deceased is dressed in simple clothes, laid out in a coffin identical to that used for all funerals in the community, transported in the same horse-pulled hearse, and buried in a hand-dug grave in a cemetery that is on the edge of a field, where the grave markers are all of similar size. These practices place everyone on equal footing as they enter the eternal community.
Licensed funeral directors play a minimal role. For the most traditional groups, they only fill out the necessary state-required papers. For many affiliations, however, a mortician embalms the body, typically at the mortuary (or very occasionally at the home), and then returns it to the home within a few hours. Very few if any cosmetic enhancements are made, even in the case of accidents. Some morticians add fluids to improve body color, but they almost never use surface cosmetics. In some settlements, the mortician dresses the body, but in others, family members or friends of the same sex dress the body at home. Local custom dictates the color of dress. Some deceased are dressed in their best church clothing, others are dressed in black, and still others wear white garments, symbolizing passage into a new life beyond.
Regardless of locale, neighbors and friends in the church district assume shop, barn, and household chores, freeing the immediate family from daily tasks. They will continue to help the family until the funeral has been held. Designated individuals lead and supervise the extensive logistics for seating and feeding three to six hundred people as well as for accommodating a large number of horses and carriages.34 In some communities, the family extends invitations to limit the number of guests, but most funerals are open to the entire community. Sometimes members of different Amish affiliations as well as outsiders also attend.35
Sometime before the funeral, the deceased is placed in a simple wood coffin constructed by an Amish carpenter. In large settlements, coffin makers keep various sizes in stock, but in smaller or lower communities, a coffin maker builds to order. Regardless of the cause of death, caskets are open for viewing prior to the funeral. With some exceptions, it is customary to have four formal viewings: one for the family and guests during the multiday visitation, one for the family in a private service the day of the funeral, one for guests at the end of the funeral, and a final one for those who attend the graveside service.
In all settlements, friends and relatives visit the family and view the body at the home over a two-day period before the funeral. They come by the dozens, if not hundreds, and “visit together—it’s almost a social affair,” said one person. The reality of death is not hidden or shielded, even from young children. One man, carrying his toddler and holding his preschool son by the hand, brought them in to see the body of a young boy killed in a logging accident.
The old tradition of a wake, in which several people stayed with the body throughout the night, has largely, but not entirely, disappeared. In Arthur, Illinois, and in some traditional communities, for example, two or three family members sit quietly, day and night, by the body, which is laid out on a bed in a room off the main living room. The constant presence of friends, neighbors, and distant family members at the home reminds the bereaved that, in their grief, they are surrounded by community. As newcomers arrive to join those who arrived earlier, they shake hands with everyone present, extending the same greeting to neighbors as to bereaved family members. This serves as a quiet sign that all are in mourning and that the whole church-community has suffered a loss. One widower, recounting the ways the church supported him during his wife’s death, repeatedly asked, “Where else could you ever get support like that?”
Members dig the grave by hand in a nearby family or community cemetery and arrange church benches for several hundred guests in a home, the upper floor of a barn, or a shop. Funeral services are typically held on the morning of the third day after t
he death, but rarely on Sundays. Sometimes more mourners arrive than can be accommodated in a single house or barn, requiring concurrent services in different buildings. The funeral service for an elderly bishop in New York was held in four homes, with all mourners coming together for the final outdoor viewing. Hundreds stood quietly until all attenders, followed by the immediate family, had filed by the open casket.
In some communities, a short private service is held with the immediate family before the public funeral. Then, during a simple public service, ministers read hymns, Scripture passages, and prayers, and deliver several sermons. Singing is part of the service in some areas but not in others. Funerals are typically conducted in Pennsylvania Dutch, but high groups incorporate some English as a courtesy to non-Amish neighbors and friends in attendance.36
The style of hearse varies by affiliation, but it is always pulled by horses and leads a long procession of buggies to a nearby burial ground, often on the edge of a pasture. A brief viewing (in some settlements) and a short graveside service mark the burial. Pallbearers lower the coffin, and family members shovel soil into the grave as a hymn is read or sung. The final benediction is the Lord’s Prayer. This venerable petition, “Thy will be done,” memorized in childhood and repeated thousands of times in life, now seals the transit to eternal life.
A funeral meal for guests and family members, prepared by the local district and other friends, may be served before or after the burial. “They will feed you and your horse,” explained one mortician who has long served Amish clients.
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