Grey-haired and grinning, two dozen couples hold champagne flutes
at a Warsaw ceremony in their honour. They survived 50 years of
marriage and in Poland, that is reason enough for a presidential
medal.
"To qualify, you have to put in over 18,000 solid days of work.
Other medals require less, so it really is a considerable feat to
have spent the last half century together," Warsaw mayor Hanna
Gronkiewicz-Waltz says at this month's event.
The lucky-in-loves take turns walking down the red carpet to accept
their medals -- silver-plated with intertwined roses at the centre
and a pink ribbon -- while family members cheer and play paparazzi
at the back of the room at the so-called Wedding Palace.
The tradition is regularly played out in cities across the heavily
Catholic country, with a hefty average of 65,000 medals awarded
each year according to the president's office.
True, marital milestones are also recognised elsewhere. In the
United States, a golden anniversary will get you a greeting from
the White House, while Britain sets the bar a notch
higher: couples have to make it through six decades without
splitting for a message from the queen. She herself qualified seven
years ago.
Yet no other country honours marathon marriages with a presidential
medal, something more often associated with military feats for
example.
"It's really quite unusual. I haven't found any other (medal)
that's specifically for sustaining a marriage," says Megan
Robertson, a 54-year-old computer programmer who runs the website
"Medals of the World".
"Although, many countries have awards for raising large numbers of
children -- something popular in Communist countries," adds the
Briton who has herself been married for nearly 30 years.
Socialist-era Romania for example had "what they called the Order
of Mother Hero, which I think she was, because you had to have 10
children to get it. That sounds pretty heroic to me."
Robertson says medals offer an indication of what a country finds
important, whether it be a particular profession or trade or
churning out enough children to fill factories and armies.
Women should not drive tractors
Poland's marital medal was introduced in 1960 under Communist rule
and is very much a product of its time, according to social
historian Marcin Zaremba.
"It's a reflection of public sentiment and the power elite's stance
after Stalinism," says the University of Warsaw professor.
Stalinism had promised to topple the old world order and that vow
also applied to family life, with women encouraged to enter the job
market. But starting around 1955, press accounts showed a reversal
of the trend.
"You could call it a conservative revolution. One specifying that
in fact women shouldn't drive a tractor or work in mines, that a
woman's place is at home with the kids and we should value her for
it," Zaremba says.
He adds that Poland's communist party leader at the time, Wladyslaw
Gomulka, was himself happily married and frowned upon divorce and
sexual debauchery.
"And so this medal is also a reflection of his mindset."
The marital scene has changed quite a bit since then, according to
demographer Piotr Szukalski from the University of Lodz in central
Poland.
"Today fewer and fewer young people are deciding to marry, choosing
instead to be in informal unions. Those who do marry, do so at an
ever later age, and if unsatisfied, more and more of them opt for
divorce," he told AFP.
According to Poland's Central Statistical Office, 13 percent of
marriages ended in divorce in 1980, while in 2012 that number was
nearly 32 percent.
That is still low compared to say Latvia or Portugal -- both topped
70 percent in 2011 according to Eurostat data -- but it is a far
cry from Communist Poland, when many unhappy couples stayed
together solely because of the era's perpetual housing shortage,
according to Zaremba.
Among last week's medal recipients was Krystyna Ceranska, an
elegant 74-year-old whose parents and grandparents also received
the award but whose twin brother is already on marriage number
two.
The retired anaesthesiologist credits her marital success in part
to growing up without this idea that break-ups are easy-breezy.
"Divorce wasn't in style. The Church didn't accept it, our
community didn't accept it, and our families were divorce-free,"
she said.
Her husband, a retired surgeon and ever the joker, has another
theory.
"We both worked in medicine, so it's fair to say we spent half our
life apart. When one was on call at the hospital, the other was at
home, and vice versa," Wlodzimierz Ceranski, also 74, told AFP.
"Twelve days out of the month we didn't see each other. Maybe
that's how the 50 years just flew by," he said, laughing.