In the Europe 1 program "Historically yours", Stéphane Bern looks every day at the roots of an everyday expression.
Monday, he is interested in the origins of the expression "honeymoon", which designates this period, often synonymous with travel and happiness for lovers, which follows the wedding ceremony.
Stéphane Bern suggests every day, in
Historically yours
with Matthieu Noël, to discover these expressions that we use on a daily basis without necessarily knowing their origin. Monday, when the full wedding season opens, the host of Europe 1 returns to the ancestral roots of the phrase "honeymoon", halfway between love and bees.
It is the wedding season, and therefore the honeymoon season.
A post-ceremony habit with a mysterious name to say the least: the honeymoon is normally the first month after the wedding, but it is also what we call the honeymoon, even the wedding night.
We owe this expression to our English friends, according to many linguists who believe that the phrase "honeymoon" comes from the literal translation of "honeymoon".
We find traces of this expression in Great Britain 200 years before here.
>> Find all the shows of Matthieu Noël and Stéphane Bern every day from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Europe 1 as well as in replay and podcast here
But its origin is much more distant.
During the Babylonian civilization, that is to say in Mesopotamia of the south in 2000 before Jesus-Christ, there would have been an astonishing custom.
At a wedding, the father of the bride had to provide his son-in-law, as much as he could, with beer with honey.
"Honey" is honey, and "moon" is the moon.
However, this custom, which was supposed to increase fertility, was to last for one month of the lunar calendar.
From travel to loved ones to distant travel
It was not until the 19th century that the English invented another custom: that of going on a trip one month after the wedding.
In theory, it was to visit all those who could not make it to the wedding.
But the practice quickly turned into a trip to better meet two, far from those who attended the wedding.
The honeymoon is said in all countries, except Denmark and Sweden.
In the first country, we talk about the days of white bread, which is not very popular.
In the second, we call this period the month of caresses, which is already more engaging.