Culture and the Ring
The other day at the gym there was a new guy named Tim. While we were working together he asked me kind of a funny question. He is actually the first person to ask me this particular question, and I'm assuming others are curious as well. He asked, “Why do you wear a wedding ring on each hand?”
If I were to ask you, “what hand does a wedding ring go on?” What would your answer be? As Americans, with our western thought, we would say the wedding ring goes on the left hand. This is ingrained into our culture and traditions.
Legend has it that this dates back to the ancient Egyptians. They believed that the vein located in the left-hand ring finger was directly attached to the heart. They referred to it as the ‘Vein of Love’. So they placed a wedding ring made from plants on that finger when they got married. Later the rings were made of wood and precious metals. The Egyptians saw the ring as a powerful symbol. The circle symbolizes eternal life and love, and the opening depicts a portal into an unknown world. Now, I’m not a historian so I have no clue if this is true or not.
What I do know is that our wedding ring tradition is traced back to ancient Rome and Greece. In ancient Rome and Greece, wedding rings were more of a business transaction. Parents would arrange for their children's marriages and the rings signified that. They would place the ring on the left hand. It wasn’t an act of love like it is today. However, at some point the Romans felt that the left hand was unworthy of the wedding ring and began placing it on the right hand. They began to consider the left hand as being impure. This is because the left hand was used for dirty jobs like…umm…to clean oneself after using the restroom. Many cultures around the world feel this way about the left hand. It's also one of the reasons why we shake hands with our right hand. If we shake with our left hand it's seen as being disrespectful and insulting. Due to the left hand being dirty and defiled, the wedding ring moved to the right hand.
Different traditions from around the world place their wedding rings on a particular hand for cultural reasons. Probably the biggest reason is listed above. Some left-handers wear the ring on the right hand to protect the ring from being damaged during work. Some cultures choose the hand based on their views of Empowerment. Men may wear it on the right hand and women on the left. Some traditions place the engagement ring on the right hand, and the wedding band on the left. Religion also chimes in on the issue. Orthodox Christians view the Latin meaning of the word ‘left’ as impending evil. Sounds confusing, doesn’t it? The gist is that different cultures do different things for different reasons.
Spain is one of the many countries whose culture places their wedding rings on the right hand. As do most European, South American, and some Asian countries as well. Their views, like ours, are based on cultural tradition, symbolization, history, and religion.
So long story short, Bethany and I wear wedding rings on both hands. We do this because we are from a culture that wears it on the left hand, but we live and work in a country whose tradition is to wear it on the right hand. Regardless of which hand Bethany and I wear our wedding rings on, the symbolism stays the same. Our wedding rings show our commitment, love, and honor we have for each other.
