What might matrimony be beyond a 'celebration of love', an imprimatur imposed upon the shaky foundation of how two people feel about each other? 

In an age of sham rites of passage and glittering self-congratulation dressed up as ceremony, in a time when sovereignty’s the prize and autonomy the moral code, longtime scholar, storyteller, and ceremonialist Stephen Jenkinson implores us to reclaim the true purpose of matrimony and ritual. There is real, palpable consequence to turning away from public ceremony—and not just for the celebrants.

“Matrimony and patrimony are village rites, a communal affirmation of the village’s ways of going on, sometimes not quite knowing how to,” shares Jenkinson. “The village needs and deserves a rite of public recognition of the seismic change in its life that matrimony means to make.”

Remembering our cultural inheritance—reassembling the shards (the presence of what is gone) of matrimony, as an archaeologist might do bits of pottery or bone—is his task. 

Jenkinson weaves historical context (including vivid storytelling of sacramental trade between Salt & Indigo tribes), cultural reflection, and personal experience in this compelling account of the true work, the use, of matrimony.

“When people are rewarded by the dominant culture for self-absorption, when they are sleepwalking through their time, matrimony can be a revolution. It is an act of redemption, and almost all of its consequences are cultural,” Jenkinson says. 

In examining matrimony and its ritual twin, patrimony, Matrimony contemplates cultural memory and ancestry, village-mindedness, ritual and ceremony (which needs witnesses—not an audience), radical hospitality (an etiquette that requires strangerhood), wedding vows (not promises), and belonging to something older, truer than self or marriage. 

Through witty stories, insightful history, and meditative questions, Matrimony invites readers to contemplate the significance of matrimony, ceremony, and cultural articulation—and how to redeem them for future generations.