There are two well-known stories about where the origins of honeymoon traditions come from. One of these tales dates back to the early four hundreds where many traditions of marriage were very different. In fact, in Northern Europe it was not uncommon for men to kidnap the women they choose as their brides and disappear with them. After the kidnapping the groom would run off with his bride and hide away with her. The reason for hiding was so that her family and friends, who would definitely be searching for her, would not find them and demand that the groom return her. His friends and family would keep their location secret so that they were protected. This time they were in hiding, that was what the term originally meant, would be over when no one was looking for the woman any longer. At that point the groom would return to his village. The phrase for this hiding came from the Norse term hjunottsmanathr. Honeymoon traditions have evolved significantly since the term was first coined.
The other popular story about honeymoon traditions tells of a later custom in Northern Europe that dealt with honey and the newly married. At one time the bride and groom were to drink mead, which is made from fermented honey, every day for the first thirty days of their married life. This was supposed to stimulate both virility in men and fertility in women. The likely outcome of this month long ritual was a pregnancy, which would help to cement the relationship. The moon aspect of the tale seems to be to signify the thirty-day period as from one new moon to the next.
Later, in the fifteen hundred to the seventeen hundreds poets and writers alike preferred to use the significance of the moon in the word honeymoon as an explanation of the way a relationship progressed. It waxes and wanes in its degrees of affection and love. This is to say that the way a relationship works is that it begins with strong feelings between two people but can easily change going up and down with the successes and misfortunes of their lives. Interestingly many of the current translations for the word honeymoon, include the Italian, Spanish, Hebrew, Arabic and Greek, come out as honey month or moon of honey in English.
In modern times honeymoon traditions are somewhat different. On the one hand it definitely refers to the period of time after a wedding when a couple take a short break after they are married to spend a little time alone together, sometimes taking a vacation or honeymoon cruise. It also has become a universal term that refers to the period of time when everything goes well between any two people. This term is often used to describe when the blissful period is over. For example, the honeymoon between my boss and me is over. This means that the two people in question are no longer getting along, which brings it all back to the waxing and waning of affections that the term was used to describe several hundred years ago.
