A custom of strewing the threshold of the home of a new-married couple prevailed in Holland until recent times.[86] This was obviously a form of offering at the household altar.
On the evening before the marriage ceremony, in the rural districts and smaller towns of Northern Germany, the boys and girls, and others in the neighborhood, are accustomed to appear at the door of the bride’s house, and smash on the threshold earthen pots and jars, with loud cries of joy. “Sometimes, whole car-loads of broken pottery have to be removed from the door the next morning.” And when the young couple return to their home, after the ceremony at the church, poor boys and girls are accustomed to stretch a colored cord across the door of the house, to prevent a passage over the threshold, unless the bridegroom throws a handful of small coins among those who bar the way.[87]
Traces of the sacredness of the threshold altar seem to exist in the wedding ceremonies in villages on the coast of Aberdeenshire, Scotland. “After the marriage is solemnized, ... the bride’s guests are entertained at her home, and the bridegroom’s at his.... When the bride returns to her father’s house, after the marriage, broken bread of various sorts is thrown over her before she enters. The same ceremony is gone through with the bridegroom at his father’s door.”[88]
When a girl among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo is married, the wedding takes place at her house. The marriage rite includes the erecting an altar before the door of the house, and placing on it an offering of prepared areca-nut, covered with a red cloth, the color of blood. The families of the bride and the groom then partake of that offering in covenant conclave.[89]
A lover, among the Woolwas, in Central America, when wooing a bride, would bring a deer’s carcass, and a bundle of firewood, and deposit it outside of her house door. If she accepted these, and took them over the threshold, it was a betrothal.[90] The covenant seemed to consist in the reaching across the threshold and accepting a proffered offering in a spirit of loving agreement.
Among the Towkas, in the same part of the world, a bridegroom would go with his friends to the home of his bride, carrying a bundle of gifts for her. Sitting down outside of the door, he would call on her family to open to him. There being no response, music would then be tried by his friends. At this the door would be opened just far enough for him to put a gift inside over the threshold. One by one his gifts would be passed in, in this way, while the door opened wider and wider. When the last gift was over the threshold, the lover would spring within, and, seizing the bride, would carry her across the threshold, and take her to a temporary hut erected within a charmed circle near by, while his friends guarded him from intrusion.[91]
