Americanization of Swedish weddings?

Sweden has been plagued with a debate regarding this year's largest event, if you are to believe the tabloids; the royal wedding. The discussion has been over whether the crown princess Victoria should be led down the aisle by her father, the King, and "handed over" to her fiancé to be, Daniel. This is quite uncommon in Swedish wedding traditions, where the bride and groom walk down the aisle together. Now America has been drawn into this debate, with the editorializing of Helle Klein, in Sweden's largest tabloid, Social Democratic "Aftonbladet". She writes: “The American wedding movies of the 1990s have affected the image of a dream wedding. But Julia Roberts and Hollywood have nothing to do with a royal wedding in Storkyrkan". Klein continues: “If Victoria lets herself get led down the aisle of Storkyrkan, the Americanization of our wedding ceremonies has become a fact. That would be deeply unfortunate”. The journalist now wants Anders Wejryd, the archbishop leading the ceremony, to intervene in order to "prevent that the Hollywood idea of the wedding becomes the expression of the Church of Sweden. Say no for the sake of women, the church and the Swedish culture!"

So Klein, herself a priest, is very indignated, so much so that she believes this will threaten the liberty of every Swedish woman and the sanctity of Swedish traditions! I will not dwell at length on the idiotic statement, but merely say that I doubt very much that it is a tradition that will spread to the broader segments of Swedish society and culture. It hasn't so far, although the wedding movies of the 1990's that Klein so despises are 15-20 years away. Klein also follows a long and strong tradition of fearing American influence over Sweden. Americanization here meaning unwanted conservative ideals, threatening the liberty and equality of Swedish women, and our way of doing things. The very notion of invoking "Americanization" when trying to make a point about negative influences we want to avoid is not an uncommon trick in Western Europe. To the Swedish left, traditionally, the very term Americanization means negative undesired influence, without having to explain how and why. Swedish liberals and right-winged have had fewer problems with American influence, which is also shown in this case when the editorial page of Liberal tabloid "Expressen" rebuked Klein's claims and accused her of wanting to remove the traditional wedding kiss as well, "a custom that has also reached Swedish wedding culture in recent years, through the Hollywood movies that Helle Klein is so horrified with".

Playing the Americanization-card is often an easy and fast way of trying to make people understand that it is influence that we don't desire in Sweden. Sometimes it is done for good reason, for instance when wanting to keep political TV-commercials and negative campaigning out of Swedish elections, but when it is done where the logic and cause and effect are anything but clear, it is just crude and dumb. Americanization is just negative, the natural order of the word, we don't even need to explain how and why.