The Roots: Law, Religion, and Social Engineering
Even if a specific “New Year’s kneel” wasn’t formally written into mainstream rulebooks, the ideology behind it absolutely existed.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many societies treated the husband as the household’s legal and moral “head,” and the wife as subordinate by default.
The Ingredients That Make This Ritual Plausible
- Legal inequality: in many places, women’s legal identity and rights were restricted or mediated through marriage.
- “Head of household” theology: some communities taught hierarchy at home as virtue.
- Public morality culture: shame and confession were used as behavior-control tools—especially for women.
That matters because rituals don’t need to be “official” to be real. They can spread through family pressure, church culture, or community norms.
And the ritual’s function is clear: reinforce a social contract where one person’s comfort is bought with the other person’s submission.
But the most disturbing part isn’t the kneeling itself. It’s what it trained everyone else to accept.
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