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The Ethiopian wedding season is upon us and many people are engaged in the tedious and often expensive process of preparing for lavish weddings that will take place in the coming two or three months. Ethiopian culture is uncompromising when it comes to throwing wedding banquets that are composed of many layers of rituals. The first step is the stage of sending elders to the groom's and bride's parents, asking for their mutual hands. The second step in the process is fixing the actual wedding day and the third one is mels which literally means 'return', that usually takes place a couple of days after the wedding day. It consists of preparing equally lavish banquets for invited guests mostly relatives and family members of the couples.
The three stages of the wedding process take place one after the other and in quick succession.
Thousands of weddings take place starting from Ethiopian Christmas day in the month of Tir (January) all through Megabit (March) until the two fasting months of Lent set on. As soon as people break the Christmas fast, they are caught in a frenzy of feasting, singing and dancing even at a time when the going has become too tough that it may not warrant spending sprees as of old. Ethiopian culture does not take into consideration the economic implications of holidays.
In many Ethiopian traditions, holidays and wedding parties are so venerated that they are observed with carefree spending, unusual generosity and moments of epiphany. The haves as well as the haves not are equally dedicated to make the wedding time a moment of unequalled joy. They usually go to any length or spend any amount of money on those parties as if they are the best times of their lives. As the Amharic saying has it, weddings and deaths may be similar, in the emotional ways they are observed; the difference between the two being that there is no return from death while the day after weddings is generally accompanied with a great deal of depression. The high expenses become clear after all the eating and drinking is over and the following weeks are often times of repressed mourning and soul-searching reflections. This is particularly true when the costly weddings take place to accommodate 'marriages of convenience', in which money is more important than love between those who tie the knots.
It is also important to speak of the days that precede the holiday of Timket (Epiphany) that will inevitably be followed by wedding sprees.
On the eve of Ethiopian Christmas, any part of Addis Ababa is usually overcrowded. This year was no exception. The newly built road from Sarris Abo to Kaliti in the southern part of Addis was overflowing with people, vehicles, animals and what not. The sun was beating hard at this time of the year and there was hardly any place to hide from its scorching temperature.
Traffic was at virtual standstill and the few cars that were moving did so at a snail's pace. Many of them were blowing their horns desperately as if they could persuade the cars in front of them to leave them some room for maneuver. The wind was blowing and billowing the trash, pieces of plastic and paper over the heads of unfortunate pedestrians.
Suddenly, a white limousine emerged from the far corner of the road and drove towards Kality at a gentle pace. A man dressed in white was emerging half of his body from the luxury car that looked like a vehicle and a yacht at the same time, and waved to the crowed in the street. Judging from the gait and confidence with which he waved both of his hands, he looked like someone running for a presidential election in a big American city or an athlete who has broken the marathon world record and snatched the honor from the Kenyan Kipchoge.
Soon other, luxury vehicles followed the limousine which looked like it was sliding on the newly-built tarmac or like a ball on an ice hockey filed. The V8s that follow the limousine were taking a good distance behind it. It is as if they were ashamed of their status as compared to the limo. Maybe they were expressing their respect to the limo by acknowledging their rank and status in the competitive world of luxury cars.
Anyway, life around the street seemed to have come to a standstill and everyone's eyes were stuck on the limo and the cars that were following it. However, life soon resumed its chaotic nature as soon the weeding procession left the area. The contrast was really shocking. One the one hand a wedding procession and on the other hand a crowed of pedestrians fighting for space in the overcrowded street-those were the contradictory faces of life on the eve of Ethiopian Christmas.
As tradition has it, as soon as the holiday season is ushered in with the end of the fasting season and the holiday permissiveness takes its place with revenge. Addis Ababans of all classes and walks of life welcome the wedding season with renewed vigor. It is as if they want to make up for the time lost in prayer and fasting that lasted for more than a month. By the way, Ethiopians practice fasting as members of the two major religious denominations like Christianity and Islam and others in between. There were also people who adhere to traditional faiths while being members of the two major religious denominations.
Whatever the case may be, during a religious fast, the person fasting will abstain from food and or drink for a period of time. What else one does depends on the faith but prayer and meditation are common ways to pass the time while fasting, even if not required. There are many people, youngsters in particular, who use fasting for health purposes because as scientific evidence apparently suggests, depriving the body and mind of food would improve the body's health by ridding it of toxic substances that might have been accumulated before the fasting season.
While fasting may be good both for the body and mind, the fact that the period of long fasting is succeeded by a period of intense nutritional permissiveness may cancel out the gains registered during the period of relative abstinence. Many people who went through a time of deep self-denial tend to resort to over-eating and over-drinking once the temporary interdiction on daylong drinking and eating thereby putting on weight rapidly. They would also revisit any illness they might have put under control during the fasting period thereby cancelling virtually all the health benefits of fasting.
Ethiopian weddings are generally part and parcel of the tradition of lavish feasting, indulgence in too much meaty meals and buttered-drenched delicacies and specialties. Some people even go as far as ignoring their medical conditions and prohibitions to indulge in forbidden foods. Others may think that one or two days of good times at the tables might not aggravate their conditions. As many of them would say, after all death is inevitable however carefully you treat yourself.
As an Ethiopian saying has it, you cannot love both ways, or accommodate both abstinence and indulgence at the same time. Not a few people are often taken from the dinner tables to the nearby clinics as a result of sudden surge in their glucose levels or suffering from sudden spikes in the blood pressures. Some of them might endure the post-gluttony dinner parties and then go to bed somehow and then wake up next day to take a fast trip to the nearby clinic for an emergency checkup.
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For most of them, a medical crisis may be something tolerable for the sake of taking full advantage of a wedding ceremony at the center of which is too much eating and drinking as if there is no tomorrow.
Ethiopians even the educated ones, are not famous for their health awareness or care. There is virtually no statistics to refer to the number of casualties and sickness that befall many of our compatriots on religious or secular holidays like weddings. Our cultures encourage to eat the best, to wear the best and to be the best version of ourselves during holidays. This attitude is encapsulated in the popular saying that, "A garment that is not used for Epiphany is better torn into pieces"
It would be unfair at this point to comment on the post-wedding period of depression which is often camouflaged with continued drinking to the point of stupor. When the post-wedding wake-up calls come, we may realize that short and long term damage may be caused both to the accounts and health of the celebrants. For many of the big time spenders however, the risk is worth taking once or twice in a lifetime, provided that there are many ways of compensating their expenses with fresh incomes, the sources of which only they must know.
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD WEDNESDAY 24 JANUARY 2024
