Part II - Gifts and Meanings
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 January 2021
Summary
Rites of Passage
As the diary of David Beck has shown, hospitality was quantitatively the most important gift in seventeenth-century Holland. This gift was commonly used to maintain social relations, both in the sense that it was offered most often and in the sense that it was offered on a daily basis. However, other gifts carried greater significance in qualitative terms. This is especially true of the gifts that were – next to a host's hospitality – presented on those occasions that celebrated or mourned life's significant events. These were events like birth, marriage and death, but also academic promotions and other events that symbolised passages in one's life.
This type of event is generally referred to as a rite of passage, a term first introduced as a research subject by the French ethnologist Van Gennep. A rite of passage is understood to refer to both the rituals related to life's important events and those related to the calendar. In this chapter, rites of passage are discussed solely in connection to ritual occasions in the course of a lifetime, because in terms of gift exchange, there is a significant difference between the two: calendar feasts are usually celebrated with the offering of hospitality (and the occasional food or small gifts), while life's passages are not only celebrated with hospitality but also commemorated by the offering of material objects.
In this chapter a number of specific gifts are discussed that were connected to specific passages in life: weddings, christenings and death. For each of these occasions a specific (type of) gift is discussed in detail in order to investigate the possible meanings seventeenth-century individuals ascribed to gifts. The gifts themselves are taken as a source, but their meaning is further contextualised by the use of other sources from that period.
Marriage and Cooking Pots
Husband and wife
The idea that marriage is a cornerstone of society is a conviction that was very much part of the early-modern mentality. As the popular writer Jacob Cats noted in his book “Houwelick”, or “Marriage”, the wedded state was a “groundstone of towns” and a “breeding ground for regents”. Therewith the rest and unrest of households, God's church and the common interest of the country depended on the quality of its marriages.
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- Strategic Affection?Gift Exchange in Seventeenth-Century Holland, pp. 97 - 150Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2006