MAKING A CLEAN SWEEP: Wedding Brooms and Handfasting Besoms

In recent years the wedding tradition of "broom jumping" has become more and more popular, but it has actually been around for centuries and over the 15+ years I have been making and selling brooms I have come across many different explanations for the act of "jumping the broom", mostly from the Pagan based religious folks and the African American community. According to Wikipedia:

“ Jumping the broom is a phrase and custom relating to wedding ceremonies in different cultural traditions, found in "many diverse cultures, those of Africa − Europe including Scotland, Hungary and Gypsy culture", all of which "include brooms at wedding rituals." [1] It is particularly associated with the Romani gypsy people of the United Kingdom[2], especially those in Wales.[3] There is "evidence showing the wedding custom was practiced by gypsies(sic) in England, Scotland"[4] as well as by African Americans and other groups. ”

The ritual of "broom jumping" is exactly as it sounds. Toward the end of the wedding ritual couples hold hands and jump over the broom, either together or one at a time and although the symbolism may be different, all couples arrive at the other side of the broom being married.

We have several brooms that work great for these ceremonies, it’s totally up to you to choose what broom fits best. For the Neopagan we offer the traditional ceremonial besom aka the witch’s broom, is about 56 inches long and is sewn in the round “old world” style, it comes in a variety of colors: Natural, Rust, Black or a Mixture of all 3 colors.

We also offer a smaller version of the witches besom, which we call the cobweb broom or small ceremonial besom at 56 inches it is about 1/3 the thickness of the ceremonial besom. It is only available in natural.

If you are not into the “old world” style besom we have the kitchen broom aka the wedding broom, which is a flat broom style, 56 inches long, it comes in a variety of colors: Natural, Rust, Black or a Mixture of all 3 colors. We also offer this broom with tree spirit carving ( carved kitchen broom ).

Carved Kitchen Broom

A smaller version of the kitchen broom is the kid’s broom, 48 inches long, it comes in a variety of colors: Natural, Rust, Black or a Mixture of all 3 colors.

Finally, we have the hearth broom, which is 36 inches long and it comes in a variety of colors: Natural, Rust, Black or a Mixture of all 3 colors. We also offer this broom with tree spirit carving ( carved hearth broom ) and we offer it in the “old world” besom style in both regular and carved ( hearth broom round and carved hearth broom round )