The Riddle of Amish Culture

by Donald B. Kraybill

  RUNNING AROUND

  Amish youth anticipate their sixteenth birthday with great excitement. This is the moment when they can join a youth group and begin running around (rumspringa) with their friends on weekends. Rumspringa continues until they are married, typically at between nineteen and twenty-two years of age.3 During this liminal period they are betwixt and between the authority of their parents and the thumb of the church because they are not baptized. Some are baptized a year or so before they marry and others shortly before marriage. The friendships and networks that develop during rumspringa form a lifelong web of social ties across the community.

  About twenty-seven youth groups, called “gangs,” ranging in size from fifty to a hundred and fifty members, crisscross the Lancaster settlement. By the age of ten, an Amish child will be able to name some of the groups—Bluebirds, Canaries, Pine Cones, Drifters, Shotguns, Rockys, and Quakers—and even describe some of their activities. Youth are free to join the gang of their choice. Young people from the same church district or family may join different groups. The gangs become the primary social world for teens before they marry, but the groups vary considerably in their conformity to traditional Amish values.

  Some groups are fairly docile, but others engage in boisterous behavior that occasionally makes newspaper headlines. The reputation of the various gangs signals how Plain or rebellious a young person likely will be. The groups engage in various recreational and social activities—volleyball, swimming, ice skating, roller skating, singing, picnics, parties, and dances. For many of these activities, the more rowdy boys “dress around,” that is, shed their sectarian garb. Hatless, wearing styled hair and store-bought jackets, they may “pass” as typical youth in a bar or movie theater. Young men in some groups will have fancy reflective tape on their buggies and perhaps a hidden radio or CD player inside.

  Sunday afternoon and evening is the traditional time for youth gatherings. Members of Plainer gangs will typically stay home on a Saturday night unless they are dating. The faster gangs, by contrast, may sponsor a “band hop,” attend movies, or play cards on a Saturday night. Members of the more rambunctious groups drive cars and sponsor dances, called “band hops,” featuring Amish bands with electric guitars and kegs of beer. Wilder parties often involve the use and abuse of alcohol. In one case, alcohol abuse was so consistent and flagrant that public officials wrote to church leaders asking for help to curb it.4 Youth are occasionally arrested for driving cars and buggies under the influence of alcohol.

  Unlike the more sensational gangs, many groups uphold traditional Amish values—driving horses and carriages, and drinking sodas or hot chocolate. The Plainer groups focus more on group games and outdoor activities. While the faster gangs are more peer oriented, the Plainer ones are more adult-centered, with parents participating in some of their activities.5 After two nationally publicized drug arrests in 1998, some parents established several fairly Plain youth groups that have strict standards forbidding worldly clothing, cars, alcohol, and drugs. The gatherings of these gangs end earlier in the evening and have more parental involvement.

  The hundred or so members of a gang will gather at a member’s farmstead on a Sunday afternoon to play volleyball or softball before a sumptuous supper prepared by some of the parents. Following the supper, their caravan of buggies will travel to another home for a singing that begins about 7:30 p.m. and continues until 10:00 P.M., followed by socializing indoors and out until midnight or later.

  A dating relationship may begin when a fellow offers to take a young woman home in his buggy. Depending on how far they must travel, some lads may not return home until early dawn. One parent noted, “The groups are intermingled throughout the settlement so that some girl-hunting lads may travel twenty-five to thirty miles to win the lady of his choice. Some do it pony express style, using two horses.”6 Youth often date several persons before finding their lifelong partner.

  The cohort of twelve to twenty youth that join a gang in a particular year are known as a “Buddy Bunch.” These subgroups within the gang sometimes have their own name. The primary peer groups for teens, Buddy Bunches often continue meeting throughout their lives. Within the Buddy Bunch, a teen will often have a “sidekick,” a best friend with whom to share secrets. Interaction with the Buddy Bunch slows somewhat when a couple begins serious dating, but sidekicks and Buddy Bunch members will often join the church at the same time and remain friends for life.

  In some ways the struggles of Amish families are similar to contemporary ones. Parents worry about which groups their teens will join because they know that one group may invite temptation, whereas another will reinforce parental teaching. Youth inclined to rebel will deliberately join a more rowdy gang, and those with a docile heart will seek more conservative peers. But even most of the fellows who succumb to cars, alcohol, and movies eventually put away their foolishness and return to the fold prior to marriage. To enjoy the delights of the world as long as possible, some young men will delay baptism until the fall when they are married. In actuality, their decision to join the church is usually made in the late spring because candidates must attend instruction classes over the summer.

  A Buddy Bunch chats together before a Sunday evening singing.

  One elder thinks the crisscrossing youth groups help to unify the settlement by creating a web of extended family ties that binds the whole community together beyond local districts. In any event, the social ties that form in the rumspringa years lay a foundation for long-term networks of solidarity and support.

  WEDDINGS

  Weddings are held on Tuesdays and Thursdays in November at the end of the harvest season. As many as a dozen weddings may be held on the same day, and 180 may take place across the settlement in a wedding season. An individual may receive invitations to four or five weddings on the same day. The daylong affairs are held at the home of the bride and often involve 300 to 400 guests.7

  The guests begin arriving at 7:00 A.M., and some may linger until midnight. The wedding ceremony is part of a three-and-a-half-hour service similar to Sunday worship. The service itself is a sober and plain event with no candles, flowers, veils, rings, tuxedos, or special music. Two couples who accompany the bride and groom constitute the wedding party. The festivities begin after the formal service. A hot lunch is eaten in several shifts, and a smaller meal is served again in the evening. Visiting, games, and singing fill the afternoon and evening hours until the last guests depart.

  To orchestrate such a large gathering in a private home or shop without a catering service requires an enormous outpouring of free labor. The bride’s mother and family take the lead role in planning, but they often have someone else coordinate the events of the day itself. Neighbors in the local church district provide food and help to prepare the property and assist in various roles throughout the day—as cooks, ushers, waiters, dishwashers, table setters, and hostlers to care for the horses. This generous outpouring of goodwill celebrates one of the happiest moments in Amish life. An older couple, returning from a bankruptcy hearing for a business they sold, belatedly joined the afternoon singing and festivities of a wedding. Struck by the contrast, they marveled, “How good we have it! The outside world has no idea what they’re missing.”

  The newlyweds typically spend their first night at the bride’s home and help to clean up the house the next day. Traditionally, the bride and groom live with their parents for several months until they set up their household in the spring when farm families typically move. Instead of a honeymoon, the bride and groom spend weekends with different relatives throughout the winter. During these visits the couples receive their wedding gifts and cement their relationships with the new members of their extended family. With the wedding behind them, they are now considered adults and expected to fully participate in the life of the community. In the summer following the wedding, the groom’s parents hold an infare, a celebration to thank the bride’s family and all the friends and neighbors who helped with the wed
ding—a way of replenishing the goodwill—the social capital—in the Amish reservoir.

  A dating couple in their open courting buggy.

  HOLIDAYS AND VISITING

  The Amish observe a different cultural calendar. Although they do not formally celebrate public holidays—Washington’s Birthday, Martin Luther King Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, or Labor Day—they do recognize Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. They also observe sacred days that stretch back to their roots in Switzerland. In addition to Easter and Christmas, they celebrate Good Friday, Easter Monday, Pentecost Monday (Whit Monday), and a second day of Christmas on 26 December. Good Friday in the spring and St. Michael’s Day in the fall are days of fasting and prayer to prepare for holy communion.

  Second Christmas, Easter Monday, Pentecost Monday, and Ascension Day are festive times for visiting and relaxing. Amish businesses close on these days, and people typically dress up as they visit with friends, families, or Buddy Groups. Youth groups will plan special outings with volleyball and a meal with their “supper crowd.” Some groups may plan a van or bus trip to another settlement in Pennsylvania on one of these holidays. Fishing is a favorite activity on Ascension Day, which comes on a Thursday, forty days after Easter. One Amish person described Ascension Day this way: “The day is for visiting and starts early for young and old alike. Uncles, cousins, and families congregate. Youth groups plan outings—softball and volleyball. Charter buses take youth and married folks to other communities 150 miles away to visit, relax, and ponder the philosophies of Amish life. With about 22,000 Amish here in Lancaster, about half of them are on the move.... If 11,000 folks move about in six per buggy that’s 1,800 horses clip clopping down the roads, so drive carefully those of you driving Detroit and imported vehicles. We appreciate it.”8

  Visiting is the national sport of Amish society. It is the social glue that bonds the community together through informal ties of trust and respect. Much of the visiting occurs spontaneously when family and friends drop in unannounced for a visit. Other visiting takes place in dozens of informal gatherings, reunions, quilting parties, frolics, and picnics. Still other visiting occurs in more formal settings, after church meals, at weddings, and funerals. Some older folks complain that some young married couples are even getting together in their “off Sunday” for brunch instead of worshiping in an adjoining district or spending a worshipful day at home. Unlike more modern forms of one-on-one visiting, Amish visiting is virtually always collective, with five or six persons, if not a dozen, in a circle.

  To the casual observer, visiting may appear as a waste of time, but in fact it is an important means of renewing the networks of social capital throughout the community. These relationships, rejuvenated through visiting, strengthen the informal bonds that link the community together in joy and suffering. Interpersonal relationships in Amish society are enmeshed in a concrete social context. Unlike the context-free relationships of cyberspace, Amish people interact with others in a high-context culture. They know more than just the other person’s name and e-mail address. They know the full social context surrounding the person—their parents and grandparents, their church district and ministers, their occupation and hobbies, their stature within the community—as well as their temperament. These are deeply embedded, highly contextualized relationships that are quite different from the multitude of transitory ties in modern society and cyberspace. Relationships in Amish society are full-bodied, high-context, durable connections that stretch over a lifetime.9

  FROLICS AND FUN

  Unlike modern societies that segregate work and play, the Amish often blend them together. Banter and humor abound as work crews clean up after a flood. Staging a wedding for 350 guests involves a lot of hard work as well as fun. The growth of the settlement has expanded options for social involvements. “We have many more social activities today,” said one woman. “We used to have a more quiet pace of life, but now there’s so many activities. We don’t go and play tennis, but we have many more visiting activities.”

  A great deal of visiting happens with frolics—typically one-day gatherings that blend work and fellowship in a variety of activities. Twenty-five people might come together to help finish and clean a new house or prepare a school and play yard for a new school year. Depending on the task, men and women may attend the frolic together or the women may go alone. Some activities fall along gender lines. A quilting party or Christmas cookie bake is for the women. Traditional farm life made it easy to participate in frolics. More recently, with more people involved in business and milking larger herds, schedules are less pliable. One frolic coordinator complained, “Today some people don’t arrive until the morning coffee break, and then they have to leave at 3:00 p.m. to begin their milking.”

  A unique family tradition is “Sisters Day.” The sisters in a family, which might include five or six women, may meet monthly for fellowship and work in one of their homes. Sometimes they preserve vegetables, quilt, bake, or clean. “Oftentimes,” said one woman, “we take our sewing and just talk while the children play.” Some sisters sew comforters that are distributed to refugees in other countries through the Mennonite Central Committee.

  Buddy Groups, extending from running-around days, often continue meeting through adulthood as well. The women may get together once a month for a small frolic or a quilting party much like a Sisters Day. Several times throughout the year the couples may gather for a picnic, a Christmas singing, or to sing for older folks who are homebound. One leader complained that the women are always “going away too much. They’re just not home enough.”

  If the women are going away too much, the men are just as guilty. Especially in the late winter and early spring, men can often be found at auctions. A favorite place to visit with friends and neighbors, the farm auction also mingles work and play. One might have to wait all day to bid on a corn binder or drill press to get a “good buy.” Yet throughout the day of waiting, there is incessant visiting, fellowship, food, the excitement of endless bidding, and the auctioneer’s sing-song call. Amish and Old Order Mennonite youth, on opposing teams, often play corner ball in barnyards before cheering crowds of youth and adults. The longstanding auction tradition, the English equivalent of a parade or fair, provides fun and fellowship in the context of making a living.

  Clusters of men often go hunting and deep sea fishing together. In addition to local small game hunting, many go deer hunting for several days in central or northern Pennsylvania. In fact, it has become popular for some groups to buy an old farmhouse upstate and convert it into a hunting lodge. Fishing in the Chesapeake Bay as well as deep sea fishing are also favorite sports. A few Amish men were tempted by golf in the 1990s, but that ended with a decree against the sport in 1997.

  A lunch break during a quilting frolic.

  In recent years many more couples are taking trips for a week or two out of state. Two or three couples will hire a van and driver to visit Amish settlements, national parks, or historic sites in other states. Whether fishing, frolicking, or traveling out of state, the Amish are always doing it in groups, visiting and chatting as they go. The visiting mingles moments of work and play. Some of the elders frown on the growing number of trips to faraway places and worry that they eventually will lead to costly vacations and worldly entanglements away from watchful eyes.

  CIRCLES OF SUPPORT

  A variety of informal support groups have emerged in recent years that revolve around special interests. Some of these are based in Lancaster County; others stretch across the nation. They range from annual gatherings of occupational clusters to support groups for medical concerns. Still others are chatty letters that circulate within a “circle” of family and special friends.

  As more Amish moved into nonfarm occupations in the last quarter of the twentieth century, special occupational groupings also emerged. These Amish versions of professional associations, often called “reunions,” are a favorite time to meet old friends from across the country. They also pr
ovide opportunities to share expertise and knowledge about tools, products, and markets—to expand the pool of social capital related to quilting or cabinetry. Since 1981 Amish woodworkers from across the country have gathered for a get-together. Several hundred woodworkers gather to reminisce and to share the latest developments in cabinetry, millwork, and furniture making. The harness makers, machine shop operators, wooden shed builders, and quilters have similar reunions as well. A harness makers’ get-together attracted some 525 people who devoured six hundred halves of chicken, eleven gallons of baked beans, eighteen dozen dinner rolls, sixty pies, and forty gallons of drink. “It got pretty hectic,” said the coordinator, “but we had a lot of fun.”10

  Other gatherings focus on medical concerns. Beginning in 1963 in Ohio, individuals with various disabilities began to gather for support in what became known as the “Annual Handicap Gathering.” The reunion rotates around the country and includes some one hundred participants from Lancaster County with cerebral palsy, polio, blindness, dwarfness, multiple sclerosis, and deafness among other disabilities. The gathering provides emotional support as well as information about sources of medical care and equipment. Some Lancaster Amish also participate in the People’s Helpers, an informal network of people assisting persons afflicted with mental illness and depression.

  Another form of support for individuals with special interests or needs is the old-fashioned circle letter, where each participant adds their letter to a packet of letters that circulate within a circle of friends. Letter writing is not a lost art among the Amish. Without easy access to telephones or e-mail, the circle letter provides an important source of information and affirmation for persons with similar afflictions. Examples of “circles” include couples without children, persons who have had open heart surgery, parents of children killed in accidents, individuals with a special illness (e.g., muscular dystrophy). Circle letters also rotate among persons with similar circumstances—ministers ordained in the same fall or spring, parents of twins, parents of all boys or all girls, to name but a few examples. In addition, circle letters rotate among relatives or members of Buddy Bunches who have moved away. The many circle letters help to bond the community together.