Bundling

Sunday, after church, a bunch of us went out to lunch and had an interesting conversation - where one of the men commented he had been to Switzerland once and really did not like the hotels.  Of course, I had to ask why, and he commented that there were boards down the center of the beds!

 Ah, you were in one of the Roman Catholic areas, I commented.  So, I explained what I knew of "modesty boards", which apparently was the wrong expression on my part - as I was unaware of the term "bundling board".

From there, the conversation became quite laughable and I will not attempt to repeat what had most of the restaurant in tears.  Let us just say that my trying to figure out how modesty equals bundling just did not go well, for me ....

It's said that the precedent for bundling came from the biblical story of Ruth and Boaz, in which Ruth, a young widow, and Boaz, a wealthy landowner, spend a night together on a threshing room floor and go on to become husband and wife.  Of course, they must have had greater self control than we have today, so now we need a bundling board in order to assure a girls honor.  The assumption being that there will be sleepovers!

Bundling, or bed courting, as it was also known as, was introduced to the American colonies by the early flood of European immigrants.  Doubtless, the cold, damp nights of their northern homelands contributed to its popularity.  Bundling under the covers might even have pandered to a certain Scottish thriftiness concerning winter heating bills, as an eighteenth-century ditty goes:

"Since in a bed a man and maid,
May bundle and be chaste,
It does no good to burn out wood,
It is just needless waste."

(Yeah well, I guess my sitting in the room with them, with my shotgun trained on said young man, might be considered a waste too!)

One bishop at the time is documented as having congratulated the devil for promoting bundling because it was "the smartest thing he's done since he put the snake in the garden."  For today's parents, the idea of bundling takes some adjustment.  Mom and Dad may be okay with sleepovers, but bundling adds a dimension this father would not approve of at all!

So in closing, may I share an expression from my youth, "May your board have a knot....."  Yeah, no one at Sunday's lunch got that one either but it was a knee slapper back home.

Well between the intricacies of early American dating rituals and humor, it seems that Swiss boy is not totally Americanized yet.  :^)