Gas trazador

The 1976 amendment to the Marriage Act, which brought about the possibility of civil (subsequently changed to independent) marriage celebrants, was a response to public demand for non-religious celebrants to officiate at wedding ceremonies. There was already an option for people to have indoor Registry Office wedding ceremonies during office hours on week days, but the demand was for another alternative. The amendment also enabled some non-religious bodies, such as the Humanist Society, to have members authorised to solemnise marriages, and registrars to solemnise

marriages outside normal office hours.32 _{A new section of the Marriage Act (section}

11) created the provision for the Registrar General to designate Justices of the Peace (JPs) and other willing people of good character as civil marriage celebrants, to meet the needs of those people who wanted to have a non-religious marriage ceremony in a setting other than a Registry Office.33

The first marriage celebrants were appointed in 1977. They included JPs and others who had an interest in the work. In the late 1970s secular funerals were only just beginning to be offered. Although it was noted previously that some people are both marriage and funeral celebrants, it was not until the early 1980s that some marriage celebrants took up funeral and other celebrant work, and some funeral celebrants applied to become registered independent marriage celebrants also. In other words, the first civil marriage celebrants and the first secular funeral celebrants were different individuals. The subsequent trend of celebrants extending from one ceremonial area into others has been entirely voluntary, and varies between

individuals and between different communities and locations. In the late 1970s and 1980s, celebrants operated in their own cities and towns with, usually, only limited knowledge of a few other individuals involved in the work. As now, they mainly worked in isolation from each other, but at this time there was no systematic, co-

32 _{NZ Parliamentary Debates, Vol. 399 June 25 – July 22 1975, p3047} 33

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ordinated way of finding out who other celebrants were, or who might be involved in similar work in other parts of the country.

At different times in the development of celebrancy, structures and processes have emerged which have connected celebrants with the work of their peers, and the influences of particular individuals have been felt through training, membership and participation in the activities of professional organisations, and attendance at national conferences. In the early days, though, there was little of this nature to assist those who wished to find their way into celebrant work. Until 1995 there was no formal training offered, and so those who entered the field between the late 1970s and the mid 1990s learnt their work in a variety of ways. A feature of this period is that celebrants were dispersed in pockets around the country, with very little structure or guidance as to how they could or should go about their ceremonial work. Many described themselves as self-taught. Some learnt from others involved in ceremonial work, including clergy and other civil celebrants. One of my interviewees, Barrie, who commenced civil marriage celebrant work in 1977, explained how his affiliation with the Presbyterian Church and his role as lay preacher at St Andrew‟s College in Christchurch assisted him in putting ceremonies together:

We stumbled and sweated to get that first one together, because you were starting from scratch. But I suppose my previous church involvement … I knew what sort of framework needed to be done and so by taking out the religious aspects you are left with a framework you can actually build on. (Barrie 1/11/05)

Eddie, another research participant and a former funeral director who became a funeral celebrant in 1980, described using the same structure for funeral ceremonies as a minister would have:

I think the original structure was the same [as what a minister would normally use for a funeral]. Like everything, there‟s a beginning, a middle, and an end … When I first started it was quite easy to write a complete new service every time because I might only have been doing one a week ... All I knew was, I can offer an alternative basically. Back then in the eighties we were just feeling our way, yeah, there was no sort of books that you could refer to. There was nothing written about it, because, like I say, celebrancy didn‟t exist, so there was nobody out there writing books … really, we were flying by the seat of our pants. (Eddie 3/11/05)

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Bill began funeral work in 1990. He linked his background in community activism and his experience of speaking at funerals for people with AIDS to his entry into funeral celebrant work. Rod Murphy, a former Anglican priest and former funeral director (who was the first civil celebrant in Wellington, where Bill lived) was also very helpful:

I started getting asked to play big roles in funerals of people with AIDS and did a few funerals of people with AIDS … I‟d had a very public role in homosexual law reform and it seemed like something I could extend and so I did. And I went about it quite seriously. I talked to one or two funeral

directors and one or two celebrants. In fact, particularly Rod Murphy … He gave me a copy of the manuscript of his book and took me on an interview with a family, you know, who he was doing a funeral for and introduced me to funeral directors. Yeah, he was very, very good. (Bill 1/9/06)34

Mary, who commenced her celebrant work in 1990, refers to her own experience with women‟s spirituality and ritual, her Methodist upbringing, and – specifically in relation to funeral celebrant work – the influence of Marian Barnes:

Marian was a very intuitive worker and my learning with her was observing her. She never ... we never talked pragmatically about what she was doing. What she gifted me was being able to go along to interviews with families where there had been a death, observe her process of interview, and then see the final product she had produced – be at the funeral with her. And then she gave me a copy. (Mary 2/11/05)

Other celebrants drew on skills they had acquired in their professions. Some

struggled to find relevant resources and recalled relying on their own life experience, pragmatism, judgement, and skills. Pratima began marriage celebrant work in

Auckland in 1998. Like Eddie 18 years earlier, she spoke poignantly about the isolation she experienced.

You know the saddest part was that marriage celebrants up till now do not get any training before they go out into the market. And I think that‟s quite dangerous, too, because you‟ve got to learn somewhere, you‟ve got to start somewhere, and obviously you‟re going to make a few mistakes before you really come to realise that this is how it‟s done. That was the hardest and saddest part for me, that I was thrown into the sea and asked to swim out. No materials, no books, no direction as to where you get books to guide you, but they [the registrar] did give me some names of experienced Kiwi celebrants. (Pratima 1/11/05)

34 _{After I interviewed Murphy in 2006 he showed me chapters of his unpublished manuscript. His} discussion on the funeral as a celebration (Chapter 1) and his views on the similarities between interviewing for funerals and oral histories (Chapter 2: 16) were particularly interesting and relevant to this study.

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New Zealand followed Australia in terms of civil marriage celebrancy. In Australia the national (federal) legislation which allowed for marriages to be solemnised by civil celebrants was the Marriage Act 1961 (Part IV, Division 2, Marriage by

Authorised Celebrants, Sections 40–51). It was more than a decade before the federal law filtered down to state level and it took varying amounts of time in different states for relevant statutory and administrative processes to occur so that celebrants could perform marriages. In effect, civil marriage celebrancy was underway in Australia by the mid 1970s. Several of New Zealand‟s pioneer celebrants knew of, and were influenced by, the work of the Australian, Messenger, and some had access to copies of his publication on civil celebrancy, Ceremonies for Today (Messenger, 1979). One of those who did was Barrie:

Well I did have the advantage of the Dally Messenger book which gave – gives – you a good basic outline. The key to any funeral service is telling the deceased‟s life story, so the technique is how do you go about getting that information in an efficient way. All your life experience helps you in doing that. (Barrie 1/11/05)

Marian Barnes, in my correspondence with her, expressed the view that some of Messenger‟s resources were possibly derived from the Rationalists and Humanists Association. This is plausible, since the association had registered organisational celebrants who conducted non-religious marriage ceremonies prior to the

introduction of civil celebrants in the late 1970s. On several occasions Messenger travelled to New Zealand. Speaking at the New Zealand Celebrants Inaugural Conference in the South Island (Christchurch, 26-28 June, 1998), he advocated celebrant-led ceremonies to „make memories‟, and „move emotions‟, through respecting traditions and ritual‟s role in linking people with the past, attention to the processes by which celebrants work with clients prior to ceremonies. These included the need for sufficient „lead time‟, preparatory components of ceremony

development: clear intentional planning, thinking, creating, choosing, composing, consulting, refining and rehearsing. Messenger also highlighted a range of possible dramatic elements for civil ceremonies such as poetry, prose, music, choreography, locations, artifacts and costume (Messenger, 1998).Messenger spoke also at a later conference of celebrants in the Waikato in 2001.

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Messenger‟s Australian book was among the first to be published on civil

celebrancy, and since then, New Zealand authors have also written on the topic. The following New Zealand publications were mentioned by the celebrants I interviewed as influential in their work. The earliest book to focus on putting together marriage ceremonies was Douglas Pratt‟s Celebrating Marriage: A Practical Guide to Getting Married in New Zealand (1986), reprinted in 1990 then revised in 1996. The earliest book on secular funerals was Marian Barnes‟ Down to Earth: The Changing Funeral Needs of a Changing Society (1991). Hilary Hudson‟s Civil Rites and Ceremonies

(1995) and Juliet Batten‟s Celebrating the Southern Seasons: Rituals for Aotearoa

(1995) followed, the latter being revised and reprinted in 2005. Brian Malcouronne wrote and published Honouring Our Loved One: Notes and Resources for Funeral Celebrants, Families, and Friends (2001).