If you’ve taken a look at your calendar recently you’ve probably remembered that tomorrow is Leap Year Day, the day on which, by old British custom, women are empowered to propose to men. It all began, apparently, in 1288 with that unlikely feminist Queen Margaret of Scotland. It was she who ruled that one day in every four years, on 29 February, any woman could ask for the hand of any man in marriage and, unless he was already married or betrothed, he had either to accept or pay a heavy fine. And maybe it’s a custom worth reviving, given the current decline in marriage, and the reluctance men seem to have nowadays to what’s become known as the ‘C’ word: commitment.
I say this because of a really odd experience I had the other week when I helped launch something called National Marriage Week. There I was extolling the virtues of marriage when an interviewer asked me, ‘Isn’t that very politically incorrect? Who really believes in marriage any more?’ To which I had to answer, ‘I do, there anything more lasting or more gracious than the commitment to share your life with the person you love, and, through that commitment, to bring new life into the world?’
Marriage, sanctified by the bond of fidelity, is the nearest life gets to a work of art. It’s what I call the poetry of the everyday. And though the moral fashions of today, like yesterday’s papers, will one day crumble into dust, of this I am sure: marriage will still be there as the greatest redemption of our loneliness, the point where soul meets soul and we know we are not alone.
And yesterday as I stood under the bridal canopy, officiating at because in this buy-it, use-it and throw-it-away society of ours, is the wedding of a couple we’ve come to know, I felt again the sheer beauty of that lovely Jewish ceremony, 2,000 years old and yet still fresh, and I thought that maybe that’s why Judaism survived – because we always did cherish marriage, the family, and the home.
And yes, sometimes it doesn’t work out; and I know relationships do fail; but still, surely, there are few risks more worth taking, because where there is peace between husband and wife, you can take all the curve-balls life has to throw at you, knowing you are there for one another in the tough times as well as the good. And it all comes from the ‘C’word – commitment – the best investment any of us can make in our future. So for all of you who thought of asking the question but never quite got round to it, remember that tomorrow’s a great day for doing so, and I just hope the answer’s yes.
