We have been hearing since Morgan has been born, oh looks like she has some "Stork Bits". Which made me wonder where the stork and baby's come from. So I went to the internet to see what I could find. Here's what I have found on Wikipedia.
Childbirth
In Western culture the White Stork is a symbol of childbirth. In Victorian times the details of human reproduction were difficult to approach, especially in reply to a younger child's query of "Where did I come from?"; "The stork brought you to us" was the tactic used to avoid discussion of sex. This habit was derived from the once popular superstition that storks were the harbingers of happiness and prosperity, and possibly from the habit of some storks of nesting atop chimneys, down which the new baby could be imagined as entering the house.
The image of a stork bearing an infant wrapped in a sling held in its beak is common in popular culture. The small pink or reddish patches often found on a newborn child's eyelids, between the eyes, on the upper lip, and on the nape of the neck are sometimes still called "stork bites". In reality they are clusters of developing veins that soon fade.
The stork's folkloric role as a bringer of babies and harbinger of luck and prosperity may originate from the Netherlands and Northern Germany, where it is common in children's nursery stories. The presence of a distinct local group of names with possibly taboo origin is also notable.
In Walt Disney's 4th classic Dumbo, the stork (more generally "Mr. Stork") delivers babies to their animal mothers. At the beginning of the film, he delivers Dumbo to Mrs. Jumbo. He is voiced by Sterling Holloway.
Vlasic uses this child-bearing stork as a mascot in North America for its brand of pickles, merging the stork-baby mythology with the notion that pregnant women have an above-average appetite for pickles.
The Bible makes reference to the stork, e.g. Leviticus 11:19.
Regional Symbolism
The white stork is the symbol of The Hague in the Netherlands, where about 25 percent of European storks breed, as well as of Poland, where the majority of the remainder breed. It is also a symbol of the region of Alsace in eastern France. In Vietnam, the stork symbolize the strenuousness of poor Vietnamese farmers and the diligence of Vietnamese women.
2 comments:
At the beginning I wasn't sure if you were asking where does the concept of a stork with a baby come from or where do storks and where do babies come from...I would think you'd have figured that one out by now!!! :)
Marshall -
The first comment is a spyware/spamlink.
Also, I told you that dancing would lead to babies...
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