Now that is interesting! I could never guess this origin of the word Honeymoon.
"Honeymoon" was the month after a wedding, when the bride's father would give the groom all the mead he wanted. Mead is a honey beer while the Babylon calendar was a lunar calendar. The Babylonians started calling the month the "honey month" but we now call it a "honeymoon"
Why would the father-in-law be so generous and do that?
The word "honeymoon" itself is derived from the Scandinavian practice of drinking mead, or fermented honey, during the first month of the marriage (measured by one moon cycle) in order to improve the likelihood of conception.
That seems more like our human sense of incentives.
And what about this origin from Susan Waggoner, a wedding historian and author at brides.com:
Unsurprisingly, honeymoon history is a bit gloomy, just like many wedding traditions. Wedding historian Susan Waggoner says the honeymoon "dates from the days of marriage by capture when, after snatching his bride, the groom swept her away to a secret location, safe from discovery by her angry kin." And there he would keep her until "the family would either give up the search or the bride would become pregnant, making all questions of her return moot."
Compare that to the answer at the weddingideasmag.com website ‘Hony’ meaning honey, symbolised the sweetness of marriage and the European custom to supply newlyweds with the month-long lasting alcoholic liquor called mead made with fermented honey and water. ‘Moone’ was believed to have referred to the body’s monthly cycle. So the hony moone was the period in your life following your marriage, where everything is sweet and rosy. It also suggests that not ALL moons of married life are to be as sweet as the first. This is why you will often hear the term ‘honeymoon period’ banded around.
I expect the modern definition applies to Honeymoon Island in Florida, pictured here. |