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Embrace the Season of Love with Historic Bethlehem Museums & Sites’ Love, Lust & Marriage Tour
January 16th, 2025
Guests will explore the early Moravians’ unique traditions pertaining to love, courtship and marriage on this limited-run tour through February.
Forget the scramble for a last-minute dinner reservation and take a totally different approach to Valentine’s Day by discovering how the region’s early Moravians approached relationships and intimacy. Historic Bethlehem Museums & Sites (HBMS) is pleased to announce the return of the Love, Lust & Marriage Tour, the 90-minute, adults-only experience that’s back for a limited run Fridays in January and Saturdays in February at 3 p.m. Tickets can be purchased at historicbethlehem.org. Historic Bethlehem Museums & Sites members save 25 percent off tickets.
Love, Lust & Marriage, which is led by a guide dressed in Colonial-era attire, takes place in the Moravian Museum, located inside the 1741 Gemeinhaus, the oldest building in Bethlehem. It’s an experience that’s sure to captivate guests as it covers the unique and surprising ways Bethlehem’s settlers approached courtship, romance and relationships.
Attendees will appreciate learning about Moravian practices, which were heavily influenced by Christian beliefs and rooted in the desire for communal harmony. Just one example is the Moravian Lot System. In this approach, a metal jar or other container filled with positive, negative and “not at this time” responses helped dictate a man’s eligibility to propose to a woman chosen by the church. These traditions were progressive for their era, empowering women with the autonomy to decline a proposal regardless of the Lot System’s outcome.
Guests will also learn about the “choirs” that were strategically divided based on sex, age and marital status in order to promote community. The practice also helped single members determine who was fit to marry. Members of choirs would eat, live and worship together.
Finally, attendees will dive into the intimate details, as they discover the significance of the blue cabinets and what took place inside them.
This intimate look at the complexities of love within a community that to this day values faith, respect and equality offers an incredibly different look at Bethlehem’s history. It also makes a unique Valentine’s Day experience you won’t find anywhere else other than Historic Bethlehem.
