Abstract
Based on a large array of sources, from ethnographic fieldwork to Internet discussion forums and archive surveys, this article traces complex gift-giving practices between godparents and godchildren, as they developed and thrived in the region of Transylvania, Romania, from the 1950s onward. I examine, in particular, the monetization of gifts in connection to recent turning points in economic history. Through various case studies, I show how godparenthood relates to notions of calculation, exchange, obligation, debt, care, and charity. The findings suggest a tension at the heart of godparenthood narrative and practice, a tension with many interrelated facets, between exchange and charity, between calculation and solidarity, self-interest, and care. This tension emerges in everyday talk and lived experiences of Romanians and also in broader anthropological discussions about the possibility of altruistic gift and the pitfalls of reciprocity.
Keywords
Cash gifts, and more broadly, economic calculations, are ever-present in everyday talk about godparenthood across Romania, including the region of Transylvania. Such monetization of gifts is apparently of a recent origin; in the 1950s and even in the 1960s, it was not widespread at all, according to archival and ethnographic sources. Today, one often hears phrases such as “I can’t afford to be a godfather” or “we have to save a lot of money cause we’re going to be godparents next year.” Even though money became the standard gift across the whole of Romania during socialism, sometimes accompanied by gifts in kind, much tension still emerges around intricate monetary calculations involving notions of cost, obligation, friendship, sacrifice, shame, pride, relatedness, and affordability. The cash gifts for weddings and baptisms that I analyze in this article are subject to divergent popular narratives. On the one hand, we find ethnographic support for the claim that bonds of affection can be cemented through money. Implying effort and sacrifice on the part of the giver, money can be as good a gift as any other. Popular narratives approving of cash gifts focus on giving as a proof of care. On the other hand, people experience uneasiness and anxiety over cash gifts; they sometimes regard contemptuously rituals imbued by the presence of money as being market-like and portray cash gifts as signifiers of a purely self-interested pursuit of utility in human relations. Yet, in ritual practices, people give and receive money as an act of relatedness and participation in the life of others.
This tension mirrors two theoretical threads in the anthropology of money. First, the classical position of thinking of money as eroding social solidarities and depersonalizing social relations, because it promotes individualism and a modern spirit of rationalization and calculability. 1 Here, the shortcomings of money are seen as related to quantification: there seems to be an anxiety about numbers and counting in general. 2 An antithetic approach considers that money does not necessarily alienate, but, always and everywhere, quantification and money can also resacralize exchanges and conversions. 3 This approach conveys that money understood solely as an objective means of calculation might prove to be a theoretical and empirical cul-de-sac. 4 Parry and Bloch 5 argue that the inappropriateness of giving money as gifts is a peculiarity of Western culture. “We” find it awkward to offer money because for “us,” it signifies a sphere of economic exchange that is inherently impersonal, transitory, and amoral, while “we” think that gifts are meant to express relationships that are personal, enduring, and moral. However, “where the economy is embedded in society and subject to its moral laws, monetary relations are rather unlikely to be represented as an antithesis of bonds of kinship and friendship, and there is consequently nothing inappropriate about making gifts of money to cement such bonds.” 6 The Transylvanian ethnography that I am about to unfold in this article shows a tension present at the heart of locally accepted values: money as gifts is both a source of perversion and of care. The presence of money in godparenthood relations and related rituals tends to infuse such relationship with notions of expense, debt, gain, and affordance.
This article also follows the issue of counter-gifts and more broadly reciprocation. Gifts from the godparents to a child or to a newlywed couple, in the case of wedding godparenthood, 7 are a rule in Transylvania. However, counter-gifts toward godparents, either as an immediate return during the ritual or as exchanges occurred after the event, do not necessarily occur everywhere with the same intensity. In some cases, godparents’ gifts should never be reciprocated; they constitute a sort of pure gift, analogous to charity. In other cases, they are reciprocated on the spot with no further exchanges occurring. However, sometimes, long-term relationships of exchange can be seen, even patron–client relations. All of these possibilities will be discussed throughout this article. Particular attention will be given to cases where no reciprocation occurs or is expected, as these cases are rarely described in godparenthood literature.
In the absence of reciprocation or long-run interactions, can one say that godparenthood is a relationship at all? Usually, anthropologists and historians depict godparenthood as a “relationship” which begins at the moment of baptism or marriage and as one that opens a “permanent line of communication” 8 between two families. It either brings together persons who had little to do with each other or it transforms the nature of previous relationships of collegiality, friendship, business partnership, and neighborhood. 9 Anthropologists and historians generally agree that godparenthood relations tend to strengthen existing ties by infusing them with mutual trust, increased respect, and a sense of mutual obligation, 10 a process which gives rise to veritable networks of solidarity and mutual aid. It has also been reported that godparenthood relations frequently took the form of explicit patron–client relationships; 11 in exchange for favors and cash loans, godchildren provided work, such that “deference [is] traded for social and economic advantage.” 12 A pitfall of such approaches is that they assume that once such ties are ritually sealed, the relationship will automatically endure and that all things expected from the alliance will routinely happen. My observations in Transylvania, however, point to cases in which reciprocity on the part of the godchildren or their family does not happen or is not even desired. Instead of a relationship, godparenthood could be termed as a singular ritual event, involving gift giving, sustained by Christianity-infused local beliefs about the virtues of charity, expressed as pomană.
Romanian researchers give scattered information on godparenthood in the twentieth century. These accounts tend to focus on the folkloric aspects, ritual acts, and material objects related to the practice, to “traditions,” rather than on its social aspects and the potential values attached. 13 However, in this article, I use the raw data collected by the Romanian Institute for Ethnography and Folklore, Constantin Brăiloiu, between 1975 and 1980 in 243 localities across all Transylvania, included in the Corpus of Romanian Ethnographical Documents (henceforth Corpus). 14 From the Corpus, I traced certain trends in monetization of the gift and also in the spread of certain godparenthood models. The data of the Corpus are uniquely rich and thus very valuable; yet, a word of caution is that the Corpus data assume that localities feature unified patterns, offering only one or two interview excerpts per locality, often in normative phrasing such as “here gifts are usually given in such and such way,” overlooking variation within localities. To complement with ethnographic detail, the article also draws on in-depth research I undertook in a village in the Apuseni Mountains 15 during 2009 and 2010. In addition, I bring in evidence from web-based discussion forums for young brides and young mothers from 2010 onward. 16 Such forums include entries by approximately 300 persons, mostly young urbanites, who seek advice from other forum participants, search, for examples, and share experiences, often providing many details and subjective insights. Among the topics of the forum entries, gifts figure as the largest in the discussions.
My data focus on the area broadly known as Transylvania 17 ; I include the regions of Banat, Crişana, and Maramureş. I refer both to urban and rural areas that have been exposed to the same major political and socioeconomic changes over roughly the last century. I draw on examples from different areas to highlight the expansion of cash gifts and their diverse expressions and meanings. Throughout the article, I treat wedding and baptismal godparenthood together, although certain priority will be given to baptismal godparenthood. The two forms of godparenthood share many features and people often regard them as one single practice.
Rules, Models, and Change
The rules of the Romanian Orthodox Church mention that spiritual kinship ties result from baptismal godparenthood. The church forbids marriage among baptismal spiritual relatives until the degree of third cousin. For spiritual third cousins, marriage may be possible with a special license from the local bishop, however, not for second or first cousins. Before 1954, not only the church, but also Romanian civil law regarded baptismal godparenthood as a recognized form of kinship, legally prohibiting marriage between spiritual relatives. After 1954, the Communist Party banned religious practice altogether, but baptism remained widespread and priests still prevented marriages between baptismal kin to the degree of third cousin. The church is more ambiguous about spiritual kinship resulting from wedding godparenthood. In the remote past, wedding godparenthood was recognized; according to one of the canonical books from 1652 (Pravila Mare), kinship ties result from wedding rituals. 18 However, current church legislation does not consider weddings as an occasion for creating godparenthood.
In folk practice, the wedding is considered a more important life-cycle ritual than baptism and is celebrated with more pomp. Accordingly, godparents are chosen primarily for a wedding and then the same become godparents of the children resulting from the marriage (Table 1), so that the ties between two families are usually doubled, entailing both wedding godparenthood (năşie de cununie) and baptismal godparenthood (năşie de botez). When they are different, the wedding godparents are usually considered to be more important.
Marriage Godparents Chosen as Baptismal Godparents for Children of the Marriage (1970–1980).a
aTwo hundred and forty localities counted.
Godparenthood Models in Transylvania
The large majority of Romanians consider baptism and religious weddings to be important and on these occasions, they enter godparenthood relations. For baptism, some have only one godparent, most have a married couple, and others more than ten godparents, according to their choice or to local custom. For weddings, the couple of godparents is the general model, whether it is a married couple or (more rarely) an ad hoc formed pair. In the 1970s and 1980s, one couple as godparents was the most widespread model, both for baptisms and weddings (57 percent of cases for baptism and 65 percent for wedding) as given in Tables 2 and 3. 19 Amid various godparenthood practices, two noteworthy yet relatively uncommon models can be found in Transylvania: the model of inherited godparenthood and the model of multiple godparenthood. 20 I discuss these two models briefly below. The principal difference between these types is the number of godparents per child or marriage and the way of initiating the relationship either predefined by inheritance rules or chosen freely.
Number of Baptismal Godparents per One Child (1970–1980).a
Source: Data collected by the Romanian Institute for Ethnography and Folklore Constantin Brăiloiu between 1975 and 1980 included in the Corpus of Romanian Ethnographical Documents, published in Ion Ghinoiu, Sărbători şi obiceiuri: Transilvania. Banat, Crişana, Maramureş (Bucureşti, Romania: Ed. Enciclopedică, 2002–2004).
Note: All the other tables in the paper, except for table 6, have the same source. The number of cases/localities counted is important in all tables, because not all interview excerpts contained information on the issues of relevance.
aAnswers from 142 localities counted.
Number of Wedding Godparents per Couple (1970–1980).a
aTwo hundred and eighteen localities counted.
The model of inherited godparenthood was studied by H. H. Stahl in southern Transylvania, in the village of Drăguş 21 This model is quite widespread in Transylvania, notably in the Southwest, the region of Banat; it is also spread in the southern Romanian region of Oltenia, in Serbia, and in Bulgaria. 22 Here, the custom is to inherit the “duty” to be godparent to another family, so that one lineage becomes godparents to another lineage. Historically, the whole system seems to have been subject to a set of strict norms and was not subject to the free choice of godparents. In Drăguş, godparenthood was transmitted from one generation to the other, so that one descent group became spiritual kin to another descent group in the paternal line following the residence (household) principle. 23
Multiple godparents
While religious canon law warns against multiple godparents, this was and still is fairly common practice across Transylvania, notably in the northern areas (Maramureş, Bistriţa), and also among Gypsy families. 24 The Corpus comprised of the results of research conducted during the 1970s–1980s finds multiple godparenthood at baptisms, meaning more than three individuals, in 19 percent of the localities, and more than ten godparents in 4 percent of the cases (Table 2). At weddings (Table 3), in 14 percent of cases, there were three couples of godparents or more (there is a prominent difference between baptism and wedding: in the case of weddings, godparents had to be couples, who were preferably but not necessarily married; the idea behind the preference is that only a married couple can guide another couple throughout their life). The practice of multiple godparenthood is still very much in use at present.
Under socialism, families with better economic standing or with newly acquired functions and appointments as party-related bureaucrats had more godparents, as my interviews show. While many informants mentioned that a larger total gift was the reason behind having many godparents, because the financial responsibility of the godparents was somewhat divided, individual gifts from multiple godparents were significantly lower than in the case with a single godparent. Yet, interviewees were convinced that the total money yield was higher when multiple godparents were chosen. Based on data from Gypsy families of a village in Transylvania, Fosztó suggests that multiple godparenthood should be understood as part of the competitive and individualist structure of particular societies, 25 as each family pursues its own family politics, trying simultaneously to secure contacts within the economically dominant groups and also to have an animated celebration with a lot of guests. 26
Changes in Godparenthood over the Last Fifty Years
The fact that godparenthood is an extremely malleable practice, being sensitive to socioeconomic changes, while still preserving its core, has been signaled by anthropologists and historians alike. 27 Throughout the recent history of the region of Transylvania, godparenthood practices changed at a few turning points: the installment of the communist regime in 1948, increasing modernization and industrialization in the 1970s, food scarcity in the 1980s, and the fall of the communist regime in 1990.
The beginning of the socialist period, the 1950s, brought about changes in patterns of godparenthood because wealthy elites were imprisoned or deported to the southern Romanian plains and all their goods and possessions were confiscated. The Communist Party imposed the collectivization of property and forced villagers to deliver part of their home production of meat and dairy products in the form of quotas. 28 Consequently, the old village elites were replaced with new ones, changing the profile of sought-after godparents. The old landed elites, who became known as the kulaks (chiaburi), became class enemies, “exploiters.” 29 The new elites were the previously poor and excluded, who acquired important functions in the new socialist state as cooperative presidents, mayors, and policemen. It became desirable to have a benevolent godfather in a good position at the local agricultural center or a party activist who could help with circumventing the new onerous obligations. Godparenthood became an instrument, a way to domesticate the Communist Party through creating personal ties within it, “to shape an institutional, instrumentalized relationship through affective, culturally grounded ties.” 30
In the 1970s, people became heavily employed in industry, and migration to urban centers reached high proportions. During the 1970s and 1980s, the practice of ritual kinship was transformed. The research of Sam Beck 31 and David Kideckel 32 shows that in this time, areas that had practiced the inherited godparenthood slowly abandoned this model in favor of choice-based goodparenthood. Beck reports that at the frontier between the Bârsa Land (Ţara Bârsei) and Olt Land (Ţara Oltului), in the village of Poiana Mărului, mostly well-off villagers, the administrative elite, were chosen as godparents. At the time, godparenthood could have been regarded as a double-edged process. On the one hand, it equalized status by transferring capital from the more to the less wealthy through the gifts entailed in such a relationship. On the other hand, at the symbolic level, godparenthood conserved and even deepened status differences by emphasizing the asymmetrical patron–client relationship. Kideckel reports a change in godparenthood practices in the middle years of socialism (when peasants became peasant workers, 1973–1976), the orientation of choice toward outsiders, mostly colleagues from the same factories, and also an orientation toward “aggrandizing” godparents (whose social status was on the rise). Such practices accounted for more instrumentality in relations, because of increased mobility, social differentiation, and hardships.
In the Maramureş area, as reported by Gail Kligman, 33 in 1980, the villagers begun to choose for their weddings two pairs of godparents or even more as a means to maximize economic and social benefits. However, status differences among godparents and godchildren persisted. The mayor and the president of the agricultural cooperative were asked very frequently to be godparents, 34 yet the concentration of godfather positions in the hands of only a few people was lessened.
The next section will complete the picture of the socialist period, by focusing on cash gifts and will then delve into understanding the underpinning of current gifts, highlighting their “financialization.”
Money Gifts
Thriving Financialization during Socialism
In Runcu Mare (Hunedoara County), the wedding gift given by godparents in 1949 was mostly food: “two big braided breads, one tree with apples, a bowl with hazelnuts, a bowl with walnuts, two small bowls with honey, a bowl with cheese, a plate with cookies (scoverzi), two plates with donuts (pancove), and one litre of brandy (vinars).” Thirty years later, in 1979, in the same locality, godparents gave a much larger gift in kind, and a large cash gift is introduced: “10 big cakes (torturi), 14 kinds of cookies (prăjituri), presented assorted on 10 plates, 10 litres of brandy, 10 litres of wine, a cutlery set, a coffee serving set, fabric for a men’s suit (3.2 m), a pair of men’s shoes, a white shirt for the groom, bought from the store, a dark coloured shirt for the old godson [the father of the groom], two scarves, one for the young goddaughter, one for the old goddaughter, six thousand lei [money].” 35 The changes in the gift suggest a related change in the economy, that is, increased monetization and industrialization, giving access to manufactured goods, and also an improved economic situation of households.
Similarly, anthropological studies from socialist Romania describe gifts received on the occasion of life-cycle rituals (dar, cinste) as rising in the 1970s 36 and following a modernization trend. 37 Sam Beck reports that during the 1970s, the total amount of gifts received by a couple amounted to a sum high enough to cover half the cost of an automobile or the full construction of a modest home. 38 He attributes the increase in the total amount of money gifts relative to those given in earlier generations to the increasing prosperity of the population. 39 David Kideckel notes that an important turning point occurred between 1974 and 1979, as the money gifts offered at weddings doubled during that period. 40 However, although the couple could receive the equivalent of as much as US$4,200 as money gifts, “this sum could still fall short of the amount the parents had spent for the wedding.” 41 Thus, even as the value of wedding gifts strongly increased in the 1970s, they did not necessarily reflect profit-making through weddings.
Baptism gifts followed the financialization trend more slowly than wedding gifts, as they were more restraint rituals. The Corpus shows (Table 4) that in 31 percent of localities, the persons interviewed perceived changes in the nature and amount of gifts offered at baptism in the period between 1950 (since the beginning of the socialist regime) and 1975. 42 An important change concerns the spread of gifting practices, from being restricted only to godparents to becoming usual for all guests. That is to say, starting from the 1950s, as social differentiation was decreasing (or at least its public display), everyone in those villages began to be able to afford gifts, not only the better-off godparents. In 15 percent of the cases, interviewees mention an augmentation of the gifts given by all guests, while in 18 percent of localities they mention that money was introduced as a gift (Table 4). Already by 1970s, money was given as a gift in the majority of villages alongside other gifts (64 percent of cases), while primarily money was given in 18 percent (Table 5). Gifts in kind included clothes or swaddling clothes (89 percent) and food, animals, and drinks to contribute to the baptismal feast (15 percent). Godparents gave larger money gifts than the average guests, up to eight times larger in the case of the Apuseni mountain villages. 43 Pointing to the centrality of the gift in the godparent–godchild relation, the Corpus questionnaires show that, when asked about the general duties of godparents to godchildren at baptism, people primarily mentioned the giving of gifts (in 81 percent of the cases). As their most important duty, baptismal godparents were expected in the 1970s to give clothes (62 percent of the cases), money (14 percent), and food and drink items (7 percent; see Table 7).
Changes in Gifts of All Guests at Baptism, from 1950 to 1975.a
aOne hundred and seventy-four localities counted.
Gifts of All Guests at Baptism.a
aOne hundred and seventy-four localities counted.
Recommended Amounts of Cash Gifts Given by Godparents According to Website Calculator (as to 2014).
Source: Accessed February 11, 2013, Website Calculator, http://catdau.ro/cd/Default.aspx?Page=CatDau.
Preponderant Duties Godparents to Godchildren (Normative Expectations).
aOne hundred and sixty-three localities counted.
bEighty-four localities counted.
The increasing availability of cash from 1970s onward created the baseline for the spread of cash gifts, of what I called financialization of the gifts. I would not say that financialization occurred as a means of simplifying social relations. Relations are by no means simple when money is involved. Rather, financialization occurred simply because of increased availability of cash, of the more general monetization of life during socialism, and the increasing prosperity of communities triggered by the introduction of waged labor. Once this trend was set, money did not cease to be offered as gift, even in times of absolute shortage such as the eighties.
While financialization of gifts happened, in some milieus it was accompanied by certain shyness about displaying of financial interest and expectations. By comparing data in Table 5 with Table 7 (first column) concerning giving cash, one can notice that while cash was in the 1970s actually given as a gift by all guests in 64 percent of localities (Table 5), the expectation of giving cash gifts by godparents at baptism (thus a normative stance as opposed to a practical one) was only voiced in 14 percent of the responses (Table 7). This big difference points again to the tension of giving and, especially, of expecting cash gifts: “we give, but we don’t expect to receive”; giving means being good and generous, while expecting to receive means being greedy and mercantile. During the modernization years, the antimercantile ideology was noticeable but become more poignant after 1990.
The Obligation of Money Gifts Becomes the Rule: Postsocialism
In postsocialist years, Romanian baptisms and weddings experienced an even more obvious turn toward financialization coupled with increased lavishness. 44 In all the weddings and baptisms I attended or inquired about, cash gifts were obligatory on the part of all guests and held the same significance of “help for a good start in life.” Compared with the 1960s and the 1970s, the relative contribution of godparents to the total yield of the events has decreased overall, because all guests give significant gifts, but the absolute value of their gifts has generally increased. Nowadays, godparents give only two to three times more than an average guest, while thirty to forty years ago, they would give up to eight times more. However, as the absolute value of the godparents’ gift increases, to become a godparent is progressively more perceived as a financial burden. Many potential godparents avoid the responsibility, with the result that some couples cannot find godparents.
On web forums for young brides, I frequently encountered messages asking if anyone would like to “help” and become a godparent, such as the following case: Adyna sent a message out on a discussion website (June, 2011), searching for anybody who would want to become godparents at her wedding. Three months before the planned wedding, she apparently ran out of potential godparents: We have three months to go until our wedding and we did not find godparents. None of our friends wants to chip in, relatives also refused, we don’t know whom else to ask. The persons we have asked argued that godparents have to spend large sums of money if they want to appear honorable, although we insisted that we don’t expect anything. Anybody wants to help? We don’t have pretentions to large gifts, we are happy only if the godparents bring a few more pairs of guests to the banquet. If you put the problem like this, that’s why nobody wants to be your godparents. They should bring a few more guests?! A few more guests to draw in means creating obligations…. In your actual circumstances, you should seek for nice people you can trust, and not for people with large pockets. Well, I have to be honest here, if this couple will be our friends from then on or not, it is the last of my concerns at this moment, I just want to have a wedding with godparents as the priest requires,
45
whoever they are, that’s all.
Further shades can be added to this tension. Other accounts on the forum do not stigmatize money or accumulation as an attack on sociability but call attention to the meaningful contribution that cash makes to the well-being of the recipients, highlighting that the perceived burden of the givers can be translated into “sacrifice” and “effort” involved in such acts, conducive to deepening bonds. Thus, the cash gifts, although at a first glimpse signifying the cold realm of market and accumulation values, finally come to express loving and charitable action, which also builds sociality.
Calculation of Cash Gifts: Anxiety and Relatedness
How much money are we talking about? Calculating the value of cash gifts is a complex issue around which a lot of anxiety is built. The translation of the social context into money gifts takes into account three basic concepts: need, worth, and debt. A person making a gift thinks of all these things together (not necessarily in a fixed order): first of all, she is in debt from her wedding or baptism of her children; then, she asks herself how much the relationship is worth and how much the offered feast is worth; third, she thinks about the needs of the recipient couple.
On occasions when I asked my informants directly how do guests know how much to give, I was told that according to geographical areas, amounts are usually standard, “the custom here is to give this and that amount”; and if one does not have a clue, one can ask around and find out: “you take some money with you and once at the banquet you can ask around, people will tell you.” However, as a guest asking randomly, I started to find differences between values of cash gifts offered at the same wedding or baptism, even though a standard gift value was implied. For example, some people told me that they are close relatives of the family, so they have to give “more,” others told me they came from a long distance, they spend money on transport, so they give “less.” If one thinks of the variables involved in such calculations, the appropriate cash gift appears overly elaborate and rational. But most people accustomed to go to baptisms and weddings do not carefully weight everything, but rather developed a “feeling” for the right amount. One common way of valuing gifts, derived from an understanding of cash gifts as sponsoring the ritual feast, is to match the price of the restaurant meal offered by the hosts and add a small surplus. The price of the restaurant meal already reflects the status of the family offering the feast; if the family is wealthy and pretentious, the restaurant will be fancy, the menu will be expensive, and cash gifts will be high. But the feast is not always held in restaurants; in rural areas, usually it is organized in the village house of culture or in the courtyard of the celebrating family, the menu does not have a price, and hosts use homemade and homegrown products; friends and family act as cooks and waiters.
Although knowing the right amount seems to be easy and intuitive for someone with minimal social skills, people are still very concerned about the appropriateness of their cash gifts, because not to give enough is “shameful.” In order to relieve this anxiety, websites have been created, and even smartphone apps, which help calculate the right amount for cash gifts. In these online calculators, measuring cash gifts takes into account the geographical and social context, the parties involved, and their relatedness (Table 6). In the calculation, the website involves (1) the place, region where the event takes place, the area, whether it is rural or urban and whether it is a small village/city or a big one; (2) the relationship to the hosting family, and here the listed categories are close relatives, remote relatives, close friends, friends, neighbors/colleagues, and “obligations” 46 ; (3) the income level of the gift-giving person; and (4) the location of the celebration. 47
In this framework, the godparents give the largest amounts, equal to the gifts of the parents. The calculations of the website recommend for baptism godparents to offer minimally 100€ as a cash gift.
Gifts are generally not proportional to income; people making almost nothing must still give almost the same amount as people earning high salaries. While the families with low income have to give approximately as much as half of their monthly income as a gift, the middle-range families give approximately one-fourth of their monthly income, while the better-off give roughly one-tenth. One can thus understand how for poorer families it is a financial burden to become godparents. However, the amounts calculated by the website seem anyway to fall short of the expectations of participants in the online forum; from my own observations, the godparent’s gifts can go as high as 400€ in the case of average-status families.
To wrap up, the cash gifts can be thought of as an exchange in which not only value equivalence is taken into account but also the social circumstances of persons involved. Most importantly, cash gifts have to cover the feast and also to represent “help” to the young family. However, the range of given help can vary greatly. Sometimes, the poorer the godchildren, the more the godparents will give in order for the gift to be significant, but the reverse can also be the case: the poorer the godchildren, the smaller the gift, as the godparents do not have to keep face when the obligation is not as high. Social practices provide a large pool of accepted possibilities and there is plenty of room for actor’s agency and subjectivity to play a role.
In the next section, I will turn to show how gifts are actually given in order to better understand their social and material significance.
Gift-Giving Ways: Hiding or Showing the Money?
Showing and Shouting the Cash Gift
In the case of weddings, the part of the ritual usually considered by participants to be most important was the banquet, which included feasting and dancing. One dance was particularly significant for gifting, called the dance of the bride (dansul miresii). With this occasion, guests invited the bride to dance and in exchange for the honor of dancing with her, they offered small amounts of money ceremoniously.
But the principal moment organized especially for giving gifts was called strigarea darului, which can be translated as the announcement or shouting of the gift. 48 Toward the end of the wedding, the master of ceremonies, and the person who was responsible for organizing specific ritual parts of the wedding, called vornic or staroste, 49 recited verses and invited the guests to “open their purse” for the newlyweds. The recited verses reveal a lot about the social values attached to the gift in local ideologies: reciprocity, generosity, and prestige. The recitation begins with highlighting the virtues of the feast put forward by the newlyweds and their parents and insists that the feast requires repayment. Then, appealing to the generosity of the guests, the verses prompt them to open their purses without remorse, as gifting and largesse is a sign of one’s prestige. The vornic holds a bucket or a plate high in the air and passes by every guest, announcing loudly the amount that was offered. Sometimes, he shamelessly asks for more or makes amusing comments about the stinginess of some guests. The whole gifting ceremony starts with the godparents, who are supposed to be the ones to give the most generous gifts and set the tone for all other gifts. If they give a large amount, they are said to “lift the table” (ridică masa), meaning to prompt the others to keep up, and thus to influence decisively the total gain for the couple. If the godparents chosen do not give a large amount, a widely spread practice is that the amount announced by the godparents is in fact much larger than what they actually give, a form of social known and accepted deception. 50
The strigare can be seen as a trust-maintaining device 51 ; in this form of offering gifts, villagers display to their relatives and neighbors that they fulfill their obligations and that they can be trusted to back their social and economic debts. However, the practice is now almost extinct in Romania, still existing only in a few remote locations.
Class Considerations and Hiding in Envelopes
Giving cash in envelopes entails less social pressure than announcing the amounts publicly; consequently, it usually yields smaller gifts. Unlike the strigare, the only people who come to know the actual amounts are the newlyweds. By giving envelopes, status is not as much affected. Godparents are not afraid of losing status in case they fall short of expected gifts, neither is their generosity recognized by the whole community if they give above expectations.
Giving cash in envelopes is perceived as more “high class,” more elegant. As it puts less pressure on the guests, it hides social differentiation and it “envelopes” the material logic of the wedding, framing the gift as less mercantile. Weddings with public announcement are labeled “backward” and “bad taste,” a new kind of stigma. Those with envelopes are “classy.”
In areas where both practices are currently socially acceptable, like the Apuseni Mountains, couples have the choice between doing a wedding with public announcement (nuntă cu strigare) or a wedding with envelopes (nuntă cu plicuri). 52 The choice becomes an issue of what sort of values the couple adheres to, whether they seek “elegance and style” or material gain. This freedom of choice leads to tensions. I have heard numerous accounts of guests who prefer the elegant style being invited to weddings with public announcement and feeling utterly “embarrassed” and “disgusted.” Yet, the envelope practice also causes tension, feelings of disappointment on the part of the couples, and lots of gossipy curiosity about who gave how much. Furthermore, it can result in accusations that some guests were skimping on their obligation.
Baptisms are considered to be far less business-like than weddings, as the feasts are organized with fewer guests and gifts in kind are preferred. Gifts are smaller and given in a less obvious way. Similar to the public announcement at weddings, the practice of giving money can take a public form, by putting money in the baby’s clothing 53 or in the cradle, with wishes of good fortune. However, this sort of gifting is becoming increasingly rare and the practice is switching to “envelope gifting” also in the case of baptisms.
Returning the Gift
Normative accounts (by informants themselves and the church) present godparenthood as a long-lasting relationship, in which the godparents provide lifelong spiritual guidance to children and adults. Yet, these norms are rarely followed, anthropological and historical evidence across the globe suggests that godparenthood relations provide primarily other kinds of support than spiritual. They more commonly provide monetary support, labor, or social capital. 54 Thus, reciprocity in the case of godparenthood is differently understood and negotiated in various locations.
I have come across many cases in which there is no support whatsoever, neither spiritual nor material. Frequently, respondents tend to see godparenthood more as a relationship created for short-lived purposes, rather than as a lifelong bond. Yet, it is difficult to evaluate how often this absence of follow-up relations occurs. Based on evidence from the Corpus, a rough estimate would be one in two cases. In the archive from the 1970s to 1980s, half of the questionnaires do not mention that any duties emerge between godparents and godchildren or parents after the event of baptism or marriage. In other words, while in 163 cases respondents referred to “duties” occurred at the specific moment of baptism, only in eighty-four cases did they refer to duties that were to occur at later stages of the relationship (Table 7), and only the latter can be considered long-term ties.
In cases where the relationships continue, bonding takes the form of reciprocal visits, gift exchange, work help, and the provision of loans. People themselves tend to see these relationships primarily in terms of ritualized exchanges, as debts, duties, or obligations. 55 According to the answers from the Corpus, godparents were in the long run expected to give gifts to their godchildren, in 50 percent of the investigated localities, from which in 11 percent they were expected to give money. The parents of the child, cumetrii, are expected to give gifts in return in only 33 percent of the localities (at the moment of baptism or afterward, not differentiated in the Corpus). The godchildren and their parents are more likely to be expected to offer labour in return in half of the cases (Table 8), with activities that require manpower, such as ploughing, haymaking, or potato digging.
Duties of Parents to Godparents (Expectations at Baptism and Afterward).a
aOne hundred and seventy-five localities counted.
A typology can be drawn concerning the situations of reciprocating the gifts: situation 1, reciprocation occurs immediately, a counter gift is given at the wedding/baptism, either substantial or symbolic; situation 2, returning occurs for one year or longer in the form of visits and gifts in kind, ongoing exchange of gifts; situation 3, reciprocation occurs over a lifetime in the form of work help and formation of patron–client relations, ongoing exchange of services; and situation 4, no reciprocation occurs, except perhaps in spiritual form, such as reward expected in the divine order from God (discussed later in this article).
Immediate Counter Gifts
In the 1980s, in 30 percent of the localities investigated in the Corpus, the parents of the baptized child or the newlyweds reciprocated the gifts to godparents immediately. The content of returned gifts could vary greatly (from “traditionally” braided bread, colaci, to home appliances of lesser value and to religious icons or paintings). Sometimes, the return gifts had only a symbolic and ritual value and little material value, such as the case of giving braided bread or the more recent gift of a photo album as a sign of respect and thankfulness. In other cases, the return gifts are meant to “repay the financial effort of the godparents,” so they have monetary value. In these cases, the favorite contemporary gifts are jewelry for the godmother or home decoration and appliances, sets of plates, photo cameras, and bedsheets. In some of these cases, the relationship ends immediately after the wedding or baptism. Nevertheless, in some other cases, the immediate reciprocation does not mean the end of the relationship and they can go on with subsequent exchanges (situations 2 and 3).
Long-term Relations: Visits and Gifts
Cristina, a middle-class bank employee, sixty years old, living in the city of Cluj, recounts in 2011 the following story typical for urban-like godparenthood relationships based on friendship: My daughter and I were baptismal godmothers to a couple of twins, twenty years ago. I was also the wedding godmother of Anca, the mother. At the time, I was a work colleague of the grandmother of the twins and we visited a lot, three four times a year we had parties together. At the wedding, I gave Anca and her husband a large money gift, and in return, they gave me a valuable painting that still hangs in my living room. For one or two years after the wedding and the baptism, we were always there for each other, gave gifts and everything. But, as the time passed, both the grandmother and I changed workplaces, Anca divorced, the children have grown, and I haven’t seen them in a long time, maybe fifteen years have passed now. We keep e-mailing with Anca every now and then, but that’s all.”
However, in other areas, scattered across the region, especially in rural areas with only one pair of godparents, godchildren are still expected in the long run to give gifts in kind, mostly food for special occasions, like the godparent’s birthday, Easter or Christmas; this practice has endured over time. In some areas, these gifts of food due to godparents are called by a special name, plocon, 56 a decorated basket full of homemade bread, sausages or other charcuterie, home-raised chicken or turkey, eggs, cheese, and a bottle of plum brandy, or a bottle of the finest wine.
The Long-term as Patron–client Relations
The Corpus does not mention the cases in which godparents had a higher status than godchildren, thus there is no estimation possible on how much patronage was spread among socialist godparenthood relations. Yet, some kind of measure can be derived by looking at labor relations between godparents and godchildren. In 53 percent, the parents of baptized children had “the duty” to help the godparents with work such as haymaking, potato digging, and other area-specific labors (Table 8), while only in 2 percent of the cases godparents helped or were expected to help their godchildren family. This can suggest that unequal relationships of patronage were quite spread in godparenthood relations in Transylvania in the 1970s, in roughly, 50 percent of investigated localities. However, patronage practices do not mean outright labor “exploitation” by godparents of their godchildren and there is room for negotiating in the relationship.
I found a contemporary example of patron–client relations doing fieldwork in the village of Urşi 57 in the Apuseni Mountains. Here, patron–client relationships between godparents and godsons are known and generally expected. The local model favours a few well-off villagers as godparents to the rest of the population (approximately 15 percent held most godparent positions). However, twenty-eight of fourth-one, roughly two-third of people I interviewed in the village told me that no reciprocal help or visits ever occurred with their godparents or godchildren after their weddings or baptisms.
During my research in 2010, I came across two “prolific” godfathers, “patrons,” who related quite differently to their godchildren. Petru, a well-off elder, who is a godfather to approximately thirty couples and more than twenty-five children, appears as the “good patron.” In the accounts of others, he appears to be a gentle man, caring, and respectful, not as exploitative, greedy, or shameless, as a patron would usually appear in local narratives. However, Petru complained to me about the costs of being a godparent. “Being a godparent,” he said in an almost annoyed voice, “means constant obligation”: Standing in as a godfather creates only debts. You give them money at the wedding, then they come: godfather, help me with your horse; godfather, I need a small loan; godfather, give me some grain until next week! You have to give them if you’re honourable, but they never repay you; and when you need them to work for you, they come, but then you cannot ask them to do it for free, you have a face to keep, they have a family to feed, how to expect free labour?! So, I have to pay well, I’m the damn godfather! Only obligations…. He [Boltaşu] was the socialist shopkeeper, he basically had the power here in the village. He had loads of godchildren, for whom he sometimes put in a good word at the party, overlooked a delivery quota, facilitated an authorisation, or brought food and drinks for a banquet, you know, the sorts of things necessary and valuable during socialism. And in exchange, when he whistled once, forty godchildren were present to work his fields. He did not pay a cent, he yelled, he made fun of them; harassed their wives, and they were all happy to defer without a word. He was not a very good man, but he was a man of power.
The ethnographic record suggests that even when clearly defined as patron–client relationship, the godparenthood relationship is permanently open to interpretation, and the interpretation is bound to create tensions between the material pursuit and the selfless one.
No Returns from Mortals: The Free Gift, Pomană?
In the city of Cluj the norm is one pair of godparents, and lasting relationships usually form between godparents and godchildren. Ana, born in Cluj, married into a family from a village in Maramureş (where newlyweds frequently have a large number of godparents, six to eight or even more, and after the wedding no obligations emerge, godparenthood relationships lapse into oblivion). She had a modest six pairs of godparents at her wedding. After the wedding, Ana tried to respect the norms she had learned in her native town; at least once a year, she visited each pair of godparents with a gift, even if such a task appeared burdensome and expensive. She argued initially that “one has duties toward the spiritual parents, they have to be treated well, to show respect even if they are so many.” Ignoring the frowns of her husband and parents-in-law, she insisted on those visits and gifts, convinced that she was doing the right thing. But soon, she noticed that the godparents themselves were embarrassed by her initiative: “They received me in their house, sure, but felt uneasy. They did not prepare anything to serve us, just improvised spontaneously some sweets and a small drink. I was used to large feasts when the godparents receive the godchildren, but none of that. I did not feel welcome in any of the houses, as if it were not my duty to be there as their godchild; it was as if I were just a stranger who was forcing myself upon them, sort of trying to oblige them. They obviously did not want that.” Embarrassed herself with this unpleasant experience, Ana tried to explain herself in front of the godparents, who shook their heads reluctantly: “If we were to receive all the persons we were godparents for, we would have to slaughter a cow to feed them. We do not want such obligations, we have enough obligations already. Here, you are happy to stand as godparent in the church, you give a money gift and there you are, it’s done. If they remember you and call you godmother, that’s fine. If not, god bless.”
Ana’s case is an example of the clash between different godparenthood models and a clash between different expectations. Yet, both models have in common the idea of obligation: one party (Ana) wants to fulfill her obligations—to visit and pay respect—and the other party (godparents) wants to avoid obligations—to host dinners and to give gifts. The godparents suggest that they are happy to make a gift for the event of wedding or baptism, but giving gifts back from the part of godchildren would entail further obligations, which are not desired.
Besides not wanting to continue a chain of obligations, other issues are also at play in Ana’s case. Popular religious beliefs, often heard, view godparenthood as a free gift, a pomană: “They invited us to be godparents; we thought it would be a pomană to accept, since they have nobody else to get then married, to baptise the children.” Pomană is usually a practice related to death rituals in Romania and it designates a meal offered at the funeral, and also an offering made by descendants of a deceased person, most frequently consisting of food but also drinks and house items, such as bed and furniture, for the “soul” of the dead person. 58 It is believed that the things given will ease the path of the deceased in the afterlife, by redeeming his or her sins and will serve as items to be used by the deceased in heaven, which is understood popularly as a mirror of mundane life. It is thus an apparently free gift that is not to be returned. Following from this, the term is also used in everyday life to express the act of giving away freely (a da de pomană), an act of charity. However, godparenthood as pomană is only free if one does not count “supernatural” forms of return. When delving into the beliefs surrounding this idea of free gift as a good deed, one can understand that it is free only in that return is not expected from mortals, but from God. The logic that people follow resembles the saying “what goes around, comes around”: God actually returns gifts to godparents by washing away sins and predisposing the person to good life, prosperity, and good health. One can find this very idea in the verses recited by the vornic or staroste at the wedding during the gifts bestowing ceremony. The verses stress that the cash gifts offered will be multiplied by God or that in exchange for their cash gifts, God will give them a long life (“Noi dăm bani/ Dumnezeu să ne dea ani”—“We give money/God may give us years to live”).
In the same vein of seeing the act of godparenthood as charity, the church does not endorse the reciprocation of gifts by godchildren, and what is more, bans it as a sin, as “the act of being a godparent should only be repaid by God, not by mortals, not even the traditional braided bread is allowed. By returning the gift, the initial act is somehow cancelled.” 59 In this interpretation, godparenthood itself and the gifts associated with it remain pure gifts only if reciprocation does not happen.
My examples point to diverse modes through which reciprocity is understood, negotiated, and negated. In cases where godparenthood features persons of equal standing and where ultimately friendship is at stake, reciprocity is an issue at the moment of baptism or wedding, when both godparents and godchildren (or godchildren’s parents) search to be as generous as possible. Afterward, gifts are more thought of as symbolic acts, and more weight is put on sharing quality time, such as visiting and partying. However, in contrasting examples, some persons press for pursuing a type of exploitative reciprocity (especially in rural areas), where a lot of daily work is required to compensate throughout a lifetime the “privilege” of having a powerful godfather. Yet, in other examples of unequal status of the godparents and godchildren, reciprocity is denied and replaced by the notion of charity.
Conclusions
Building on a wide-ranging set of data, this article has examined the various forms and implication of cash gifts in spiritual kinship relations. It showed how a common repertoire of godparenthood relations has been reworked and redeployed under various material and ideological conditions. This article highlights how spiritual kinship and, implicitly, wedding and baptismal cash gifts were influenced by political and socioeconomic turning points. These turning points acted upon godparenthood by changing the profile of elites sought after as godparents, by increasing and spreading social networks from which godparents can be drawn. Also by making available or shrinking the accesibility of goods and cash given and received as godparental gifts, and by the general rise of the importance of cash in local economies and everyday life.
The sort of gifts godparents and godchildren see as important in Transylvania fall most of the times into material–economic categories, such as money, various goods, and favors in obtaining jobs. Increasingly from the 1970s onward, money gifts became the absolute norm, though not without grumblings from the church and from moralist members of society attached to the idea of money as a means of corruption. In much money-related theory, the presence of cash in personal relations is seen to elicit a spirit of calculation and rationalization. Implicitly, such changes are seen to accompany an erosion of affection and social solidarity. Running counter to the image of money as impersonal, a number of studies have argued that making gifts of money can cement bonds of friendship and help maintain trust. The godparenthood literature, without making too much explicit reference to money, but making plenty of reference to aid, loans, services, and favors, suggests that the instrumental character of godparenthood relations vary across different situations. While in some cases, it can further solidarity and strong mutual-aid networks, it can also cover blunt exploitation in patron–client relations.
In the cases analyzed in this article, narratives of cash gifts surrounding godparenthood suggest a tension at the heart of contemporary spiritual kinship On the one side, some claim the usefulness and deep social significance of sums of cash offered by godparents to godchildren, touching upon values of socialibility, love and affection. On the other side, the effect of money can be crippling on appropriate sociability by imposing burdens and obligations and an undesirable spirit of accumulation. Ignoring these dilemmas, in practice, cash gifts became the norm since the early 1970s and continue to be the norm in contemporary times; without it, any guest at a wedding or baptism, and more so the godparents, definitely lose face. Yet, the supporters of money-as-corrupting narrative increasingly gain subtle ground, not by abandoning cash gifts but by hiding the money in envelopes. The growing abandonment of the “backward” and “peasant-like” public display of cash gifts, strigarea darurilor, allowed for the replacement with the “discrete” and “classy” envelope method.
Another tension suggested by the Transylvanian examples is between charity and reciprocation. I pointed to cases, rarely discussed in godparenthood literature, where reciprocation of godparents' gifts or favors does not happen and it is not expected from the godchildren. Godparenthood is not expected to be a life-long relationship, but rather a short-lived ritual event. The act of becoming a godparent is considered a free gift, a charitable act (a pomană) with religious significance.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
In researching and writing this article, I enjoyed the encouragement and help of many colleagues and friends.
My heartfelt thanks to Jennifer Cash, Bea Vidacs, Monica Heintz, Patrick Heady, Stephen Gudeman, Chris Hann, and Radu Umbreş for their comments and suggestions. Also, I am grateful to Arryn Snowball for editing.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. The research for this article was supported by the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle (Saale).