Marriage and ethnic culture

Culture is the most important characteristic of humanity, and it is reflected especially by the spiritual creation of a community. Within a community, there are certain focal points or generators of culture, which are defined by the fact that they form a certain type of spiritual sociality. Among these, the family is very important. As an act of founding and strengthening the family, marriage carries and generates family culture and, consequently, ethnic culture as well. In Romanian culture, marriage meant a very well-defined passage ritual that leads to the transfiguration of the spouses, especially the wife, to the consecration of the family union, and to the offspring’s legitimation. At the same time, marriage is a mythical scenario, with Christian and pre-Christian religious implications being visible both in communal rituals and in popular, artistic, or spiritual creations. The changes made in the definition of culture, morality, and marriage, unsupported by ethnic tradition, destroy this connection. Marriage defined only from a social or legal point of view, the diversification of types of cohabitation that imitate or replace conjugal family, risk differentiating themselves from or even opposing the culturally accepted formulas and, thereby, changing the purpose of the marital relationship from founding and strengthening the family to one of opportunity, favourable to certain social groups.