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Okay. I gotta say it. The Unity Candle is a hokey concept that needs to be eliminated once and for all. Let's review.
1) Groom's parents stroll up the aisle and light their family candle, typically to the Pachelbel Canon.
2) Bride's parents do the same.
3) The new couple then, together, light the new, larger candle.
Based on the weddings I've seen, the Unity Candle is typically pink, like a large, hard phallus up on the altar. So when the couple lights the cotton-picking thing, they might as well be asking the congregation to watch on the wedding night.
I mentioned this to my wife after one wedding. She gasped and said, "You're right!" Now she can't ever go to a wedding with the Unity Candle without giggling at the critical moment.
I think it is a lovely symbolic tradition. Most candles are either very narrow tapers, or large pillars. Neither is what I would call phallic.
Hah. Tradition my foot. The unity candle came into being in the late 1960s, like so many other horrid abominations such as bellbottoms, Nehru jackets, and Gary Puckett and the Union Gap. If it is symbolism, it's pretty cheap. And the phallic nature of it still stands.
I think the ceremony is quite meaningful enough without a unity candle or a sand ceremony or a hand-fasting ceremony. I'm with ya.
Or making up one's vows. Or the million other pseudo-ceremonial junk that people gin up in the quest to be original, but really comes off as eye-rolling nonsense that people will wince at twenty years later when they unearth their wedding video.
I mean, why do people have to junk up what is, at its heart, a simple and beautiful act with props and a case of dozens? To be perfectly honest, it's awfully hard to improve on the wedding rite in the Book Of Common Prayer, or one of its counterparts.
The fact that you see it as phallic is more a reflection on you than the unity ceremony.
Unless, of course, you realize that the wedding itself is very much a fertility ritual.
However, it's really a larger issue we're now discussing. How much additional junk do we need to add to the wedding rite? And does it really improve it at all?
The fact that you see it as phallic is more a reflection on you than the unity ceremony.
I agree.
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