Irish Family History

A friend of mine gave birth this week to a baby boy. While I was at dinner this evening, we were discussing this, and one of my relatives described how after giving birth to a child in the 1960s she was asked if she would be churched.

‘Churching’ refers to a blessing that mothers were given following recovery from childbirth. After remaining at home for 4-6 weeks after giving birth, the woman would go to church where she would thank God for the safe delivery of her child and receive a blessing from the priest. Only married women were eligible for the blessing. They were to be appropriately dressed, and would carry a lighted candle. The priest would then mark the woman with the sign of the cross in holy water.

Churching is thought to derive from a Jewish purification rite, where the sin of childbirth was washed away. In the New Testament, Mary went to the temple to be purified following the birth of Jesus, a festival that is celebrated as Candlemas on February 2. Many people considered that childbirth made a woman unholy or unclean because it resulted from sexual activity; sexual abstinence and virginity being equated to holiness. People considered the purification rite, or rite of churching to be very important as it allowed the ‘unclean’ woman to re-enter the church in a ‘state of grace’.

As a result, superstitions associated with churching also arose. There was a superstition that it was bad luck for a woman who had not been churched to enter into any house other than her own; some say this was because she would be more susceptible to the fairies. In Ireland this bad luck could be avoided by pulling a piece of thatch or slate from a roof and wearing it on top of a new hat.

According to a Church of Ireland source from Sligo in 1829 ‘it is considered most dangerous and unlucky [among Roman Catholics] to touch meat that has been dressed by a mother who is not yet churched, or to be in the same house with her.’ The same source suggested that priest would expect to receive half a crown from the woman for the churching, an amount that for some might have been hard to afford; it also suggests that in some cases the baptism of a child was contingent on the mother having been churched. The article does contain some religious bias but other sources confirm that a payment was to be made to the priest for churching.

The rite of churching was not just restricted to Roman Catholics, being practiced by members of the Church of Ireland also. It was also common practice in England and other parts of Europe. In Ireland, Catholic women had to be churched up until Vatican II in 1962; my mother-in-law remembers her mother being churched during the 1950s.

Today is Good Friday, the day on which the Christian church commemorates the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ. It is one of the most important days in the Christian calendar, and a day of reflection and prayer. Many Christians do not eat meat on Good Friday, taking fish instead.

In Ireland Good Friday is a bank holiday, but not an official public holiday although many businesses treat it as such. Alcohol is not sold and all pubs are closed.

In the past, people would expect cold, wet weather on Good Friday, in keeping with this day when they mourned the death of Christ. No animals or birds were allowed to be slaughtered, and rather than working on the land, people would clean the house and the farm buildings. It was traditional to fast on Good Friday, and to keep silence between the hours of noon and three o’clock (the time at which Jesus is said to have died).