Rituals and Religious Holidays and Their Representations among Young Unmarried Couples. A Qualitative Investigation Romania-France
Rituals and Religious Holidays and Their Representations among Young Unmarried Couples. A Qualitative Investigation Romania-France

Summary/Abstract: This article presents, on the one hand, two of the major rites of life, i. e. – christening and marriage, and, on the other hand, two annual religious holidays, i. e. – Easter and Christmas. I am seeking to reveal an aspect that had been less present in the Romanian literature of this field: the religious dimension of the life of a couple. I begin with a qualitative comparison between Romania and France that reveals the way that contemporary conjugality re-defines nowadays. Secondly, the representations of the unmarried couples regarding marriage, christening and religious holidays shall be discussed. The main purpose of this article is to question the thesis found in the most recent Romanian research stating that the commitment of the young people to religious holidays and implicitly to marriage is a matter of faith. However, through the anthropological detour, as a methodological instrument, and starting from a relational theoretical perspective, the analysis of the discourses of Bucharest and Marseille youth reveals the dynamic nature of their social life. Thus, the commitment of the Romanian young people to religious holidays, marriage and christening as social norms are rather a manifestation of their belonging to a family and to a specific social life in the broad sense of the term within a general context characterized by emergence of freedom and equality as democratic values.

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