A few days back I attended the requiem mass of a relative at St. Thomas Church in Aldona. For a change I was early but sat on the very last pew at the left. A single adult female entered and sat a few rows ahead of me and instinctively I knew she was not a regular at this church. If she was she would not have sat where she did.
Let me explain. Imagine yourself standing at the centre of the Aldona church facing the altar. On your left and right will be two sets of pews. We shall call the one on the left North West pews and the one on the right North East pews. Behind you will be two more sets of pews which I will call South West pews and South East pews respectively. Now the very front rows of both the North pews are sometimes occupied by close family etc during special masses such as funerals, weddings etc. For the purpose of this study I am referring to conventional masses and nothing special such as a First Holy Communion or similar mass. The North West and South West pews are occupied predominantly my males and occasionally by families and couples but never by a single female (ie a female attending mass alone) and hence my earlier observation. The North East pews are occupied by females only and very rarely by a male child but almost never by an adult male. The South East pews are similar but one might sight an adult male as part of a family but not attending singly. It is not uncommon to see a couple arriving together and then separating in the church to go to the male/female section. As a child I remember these unwritten seating conventions were even more rigidly adhered to. I have attended mass in other churches but not enough times to discern any seating pattern. Do other churches also have such seating conventions? Are they gender based or on age or any other factoir? Also I would like to know if churches in other countries also have evolved any special seating patterns. Also churches of denominations other than Roman Catholic. Also how did these seating conventions come about? I read somewhere that this subtle segregation was made for many reasons including avoiding distractions (due to proximity of opposite sexes) as well as due to the harmonics thus achieved in hymn singing. Of course in some countries there was segregation by skin colour rather than gender. My father tells me that in earlier days when there were no pews it was convention to have the womenfolk seated on the floor in front with the menfolk standing behind or on the choir/balcony. Some women of the elite classes used to bring a small wooden stool (bankin) to sit. Mostly because they wore a dress/skirt rather than a sari. Also menfolk had to have long sleeves to receive communion and... But I digress. The purpose of this survey is only to study seating convention in churches. We will study other aspects such as dress codes etc later. I look forward to your inputs. Cheers! Cecil =======
