Amish "hop"?

[steve-in-kville]

I never heard this term until recently. I'm told it is party where the O/O Amish youth pair off. Maybe I know it by another term?

[mike]

I never heard this term until recently. I'm told it is party where the O/O Amish youth pair off. Maybe I know it by another term?

It's an old term I heard my parents use from when they were youth (this was in the 1970s) for dances or parties. I haven't heard it recently.

[steve-in-kville]

I never heard this term until recently. I'm told it is party where the O/O Amish youth pair off. Maybe I know it by another term?

It's an old term I heard my parents use from when they were youth (this was in the 1970s) for dances or parties. I haven't heard it recently.

I never heard of it, ever. My SIL's father was telling me about it.

[Neto]

Since I've never heard of such a thing, and you didn't explain at all what it was (a type of dance move, maybe?, I thought.), I did an on-line search.
This is what came up:

http://www.irawagler.com/?p=13436

More about the :Amish Gangs":

https://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/cgi/vie ... ishstudies

(If someone had told me about this stuff back 50 years ago, I would have called them a liar. Indirectly, of course.)

[mike]

Since I've never heard of such a thing, and you didn't explain at all what it was (a type of dance move, maybe?, I thought.), I did an on-line search.
This is what came up:

http://www.irawagler.com/?p=13436

More about the :Amish Gangs":

https://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/cgi/vie ... ishstudies

(If someone had told me about this stuff back 50 years ago, I would have called them a liar. Indirectly, of course.)

It refers to the type of event, rather than a type of dance. They also used the term "gang" to refer to youth gatherings. As I remember, youth were often basically unsupervised, and so would choose the "gang" or group of friends they hung out with, which didn't really coincide with your local Amish church district. When you turned 16, maybe a friend would invite you to visit or join their "gang." There were a whole range of gangs, from very conservative where they kept more of the church's rules (even though non-members were not generally expected to do this) to the wild gangs where there were cars, alcohol, drugs, and things of that nature. To them, "gang" didn't mean what it does to society in general where the connotation is pretty much always bad. You could pick a "good" gang (there was literally one called the "Goody-goodies") or a wild/bad one.

[mike]

One of the reasons my parents were unhappy with being Amish (they were actually excommunicated, rather than left voluntarily) was because of their concern about their children experiencing youth the way they did. They left when I was nine years old, and I think there's not much doubt I would have had a similar experience as they did. Things have changed somewhat and Amish parents seem much more pro-active these days with managing their youth. I can't really speak for how things are currently.

[Neto]

Since I've never heard of such a thing, and you didn't explain at all what it was (a type of dance move, maybe?, I thought.), I did an on-line search.
This is what came up:

http://www.irawagler.com/?p=13436

More about the :Amish Gangs":

https://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/cgi/vie ... ishstudies

(If someone had told me about this stuff back 50 years ago, I would have called them a liar. Indirectly, of course.)

It refers to the type of event, rather than a type of dance. They also used the term "gang" to refer to youth gatherings. As I remember, youth were often basically unsupervised, and so would choose the "gang" or group of friends they hung out with, which didn't really coincide with your local Amish church district. When you turned 16, maybe a friend would invite you to visit or join their "gang." There were a whole range of gangs, from very conservative where they kept more of the church's rules (even though non-members were not generally expected to do this) to the wild gangs where there were cars, alcohol, drugs, and things of that nature. To them, "gang" didn't mean what it does to society in general where the connotation is pretty much always bad. You could pick a "good" gang (there was literally one called the "Goody-goodies") or a wild/bad one.

Yes, I found out these things, as I read the documents I referenced above.

[Josh]

One of the reasons my parents were unhappy with being Amish (they were actually excommunicated, rather than left voluntarily) was because of their concern about their children experiencing youth the way they did. They left when I was nine years old, and I think there's not much doubt I would have had a similar experience as they did. Things have changed somewhat and Amish parents seem much more pro-active these days with managing their youth. I can't really speak for how things are currently.

John Holdeman left the Mennonites in 1859 for the same reason. (Nowadays we would think of this as “Old Order”, but there were no such divisions back then.) They basically had a mindset that youth should be allowed to do what they want unsupervised, and that the church only got involved once youth were older and wanted to be members.

In practice, this meant typically youth would want to be members when one of them was pregnant and they wanted to get married etc before it was obvious she was pregnant.

OOMs in the present day seen to care a lot more about child rearing.

To give you another idea, my sister in law’s husband grew up an Old Colonist in Mexico. Children weren’t expected to attend church until they were basically youth age. So on Sunday mornings, gangs of children would get together and be up to who knows what back at home. The only supervision was pregnant women who tended not to go to church either.

[Neto]

One of the reasons my parents were unhappy with being Amish (they were actually excommunicated, rather than left voluntarily) was because of their concern about their children experiencing youth the way they did. They left when I was nine years old, and I think there's not much doubt I would have had a similar experience as they did. Things have changed somewhat and Amish parents seem much more pro-active these days with managing their youth. I can't really speak for how things are currently.

My wife's parents would have also been excommunicated - or at least that was the info her dad heard from an in-law who was a young minister at that time, also involved in the "Amish Bible Study movement". But they (my in-laws) moved to PineCraft for a year, after which they returned, as "no longer Amish", and joined the Beachy Amish-Mennonite congregation her in the Berlin area.

As you suggest, the situation changed a great deal in later years. (It's a bit like the situation in the 'Big Church' in the colonies in Ukraine also changed significantly, due to the MB church leaving the main church in 1860. Eventually the 'revival' spread back to the main church, where it had at first been even more vehemently rejected than what I gather was the case with the Amish.)

I count a number of Amish ministers among my friends, and I see a deep spiritual concern for the young people exhibited in their lives. Not that there are not still huge Amish drug & alcohol parties, but there are now "Amish activity centers" sprinkled throughout the area, giving the youth a place to gather for volley ball, etc. Some young people I know are also involved in periodic spiritual gatherings, one of which is in particular aimed at recovery from substance abuse.

[Neto]

.... my sister in law’s husband grew up an Old Colonist in Mexico. Children weren’t expected to attend church until they were basically youth age.
....

Since the "Old Colony Mennonites" are basically all from groups that immigrated later, out of the Soviet Union, this practice may hark back to the law there, prohibiting the "indocrination" of any non-adult (I do not recall what the exact age was). I don't think that was the practice prior to the revolution.