Re: American Dutch dialects

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...> wrote:

> > > > Erh, okay. Who they and what on earth is Chivari?
> >
> > > >
> > > What, they don't have it in Denmark?
> >
> > Never heard of it.
> >
> > > It's a custom from the Midwest and the Mississippi
> > Valley where the
> > > bride and groom's family stay up all night banging
> > pans and
> > > singing. My family, being from WV, didn't have
> > this and it's
> > > strictly small town, in any case. It goes by various
> > forms and
> > > spellings: Chivari, Sharivaree, etc.
> >
> > Does it go back to the Louisiana Purchase?
>
> It may, or it may have seeped down from Canada --Andrew would know

about it.


Unfortunately I don't. I've only been to four weddings in my life,
all of family or extended family members, and none of them practised
this Chivari. Nor have I ever heard of this word before you mentioned
it here. But I've seen the spraying of the wedding car and the
attaching of tin cans etc. many times on American TV. I didn't know
it went back to French customs, but I see in the dictionary that
"charivari", with variant "shivaree", comes from French and goes back
to LLatin <caribaria> "headache" ultimately from Greek <kare:baria>
"heaviness in the head".

> >
> > OK, so that's a local custom, but Santa is as Generally
> > American as
> > the language we were discussing.
>
> But Santa hit the scene thanks to the Saturday Evening Post and

other such New York based magazines --not through oral culture. It
seems to have spread through the US around the time of the Civil War,
c. 1860. Before that, he was called Father Christmas.

> We also use the term Chris/Kris Kringle, from German
> >
> > > You see traces of it when the groom's friends use
> > spray frost to
> > > write messages on the car, tie tin cans to the bumper,
> > etc.
> >
> > They do that here too, for whatever reason. Other than
> > that, causing a
> > ruckus had to do with Christmas and New Year. Sw.
> > 'julklapp'
> > "Christmas gift" is called so because people
> > would bang on people's
> > door and then throw in the gift.
> >
> >
> > Torsten
>
> Charivari, etc. exists to urge the couple to do their marital

business and not fall asleep.

>