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Showing posts from December, 2022

Christmas Weddings

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Our latest Blogging challenge was to have a Christmas theme...so what could I write about?  Something that came to mind was the number of December weddings we seemed to have so thought I'd provide a little snapshot of some of my ancestors who married at Christmas time. Many I've written about before so I have included a link to those earlier stories for more information.  During the 18th and 19th centuries, getting married on Christmas Day itself was a popular tradition in Britain, with churches holding festive nuptials every 25 December. Whilst it sounds romantic, Christmas weddings usually occurred out of necessity as Christmas and Boxing Day were often the only days of the year that young working-class couples were guaranteed to get off work. In the 1800s, most people worked six days a week and didn't get paid when they didn't work. It was only with the rise of the trade unions in the 20th century that working conditions and employee rights started to improve and the