The subject of weddings has come up recently, and I got to wondering about wedding rings. I’ve worn mine for more than 50 years — Caire lost hers a number of years ago, and it was replaced with other rings, so I guess she has multiple wedding rings. She didn’t get an official engagement ring until a couple of years after we were married.
But anyhow, wedding rings are a tradition that historians have dated back to Egypt almost 5,000 years ago. In a lot of cultures, rings have been, and are, used to symbolize love because the ring is a symbol of eternity. It has no beginning and no end and is a symbol of love and dedication usually exchanged during a wedding ceremony.
An engagement ring is a fairly new development that is a means for a couple to showcase their commitment to each other. It used to be a tradition that the male in the couple would propose to the female, with the woman wearing the engagement ring. But today, it seems that sometimes women propose to men and with the same sex marriages, I’m not sure what the correct procedure is, or if there even is one.
When we got married, it was traditional to place the wedding ring on the ring finger of the left hand. That tradition goes all the way back to the days of Ancient Rome — the Romans believed that a vein ran directly from the fourth finger on the left hand to the heart. The vein was called Vena Amoris, which translated to “vein of love” because of the belief that the heart is the center of our emotions.
Even though wearing the wedding ring on the left hand is traditional in America, many countries traditionally wear their rings on their right hand — countries like Russia, Germany, Norway and India, as examples. This tradition comes from the Latin adjective “sinister” which originally meant “left” before it came to be defined by evil. And —the majority of the population of the world is right-handed and the Christian cross is made using the right hand, so the left came to be understood as anti-christian, and the right-handed engagement/wedding ring gained popularity.
So I guess not matter what hand you wear your ring, the symbol pretty much remains the same. Times and customs have changed, but rings still seem to a part of all of them…..
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