February 26, 2001

jumping the broom

Can you tell me how the phrase jump over the broom came to refer to getting married?

The phrase is most commonly jump the broom. The traditional act of jumping the broom, in which a couple jump together over a decorated broom that has been placed on the floor in front of them, is enjoying a resurgence in African-American wedding ceremonies.

During slavery, slaves were often not allowed to marry, and so an alternative ceremony for marking a couple's commitment was adopted. Most historians and curators of African-American cultural collections agree that the tradition--at least as practiced by African-Americans--originated in the southern U.S. However, that is not entirely accepted; there is still speculation about possible African ceremonial origins, one of which was for a bride to sweep the home of her mother-in-law on her wedding day.

Since wedding traditions differ so widely across Africa, I think the origin during slavery is more likely: slaves came from many different tribes with quite divergent marriage traditions, and in researching this phrase, I discovered that the exact same ceremony is an ancient Celtic tradition. The link here is that many slave owners were Scots-Irish immigrants (or their descendants).

From the early days of Christianity in Ireland, rituals tended to blend the pagan with the Christian. An example of this was the handfasting ceremony, a commitment ceremony held when a priest was not available. Couples who just couldn't wait until the traveling priest turned up would ceremonially tie their wrists together, then join hands and jump over a broom to guarantee children. In Celtic tradition, the broom was a symbol of fertility; Beltane (May Day) festivities often included fertility rites such as broom-jumping or broom-riding. It seems possible that the idea of this type of unofficial but sincere marriage ceremony could have been adopted by early slaves at the suggestion of their Celtic masters. That the masters were party to these ceremonies is evidenced by one former slave's account of her own wedding, quoted in Harriette Cole's Jumping the Broom: The African-American Wedding Planner.

Today, what the ceremony symbolizes is largely a personal choice, as is the inclusion of it in a wedding. It can represent sweeping out the old and welcoming the new, or a jump into a new life, or (as it did for the Irish) the beginning of a new life in which domestic issues come to the fore. Some African-Americans reject it as a vestige of their slave past, and others embrace it as a unique cultural expression.

Linguistically, the term jumping the broom has not yet become synonymous with marriage in the way that "tying the knot" is. For more details about the modern ceremony itself, you can check out Harriet Cole's book.

Wendalyn