Cars For Special Occasions
Cars are often decorated, and have wishes written on them, and various streamers or trailing objects attached, in celebrations of weddings and graduations.
A frequent wedding tradition in the United States involves the decoration of the vehicle the bride and groom drive take at the conclusion of the wedding ceremony. Typically, various ribbons and streamers are attached, and words written upon the surface of the vehicle, and often tin cans are attached to its fenders or bumpers by strings to serve as noisemakers. Jan Brunvand's American Folklore: An Encyclopedia speculates that the decoration of the car and its equipment with noisemakers may perpetuate the shivaree, a custom in which newlyweds were given a noisy serenade; when honeymoon travel became a custom, it made a traditional local shivaree impractical, so the vehicle is given a noisy sendoff instead.
Some cars are used chiefly for special occasions and social rituals, such as limousines.
Read more about this topic: Automobile Folklore
Famous quotes containing the words cars, special and/or occasions:
“I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object.”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)
“Research shows clearly that parents who have modeled nurturant, reassuring responses to infants’ fears and distress by soothing words and stroking gentleness have toddlers who already can stroke a crying child’s hair. Toddlers whose special adults model kindliness will even pick up a cookie dropped from a peer’s high chair and return it to the crying peer rather than eat it themselves!”
—Alice Sterling Honig (20th century)
“How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)