Baby Diary – Christening

Sunday May 1st was Zac’s christening. We had discussed the possibility of a christening before he was born, and originally decided not to have one. For my part, it didn’t feel right to go to a random church with which we have no affiliation, and request a christening for our son.

However, Rafe’s parents are part of a church, and have been telling us for ages about their wonderful priest/father (catholic church – can’t remember what the correct term is!). When they asked about christening Zac and explained that it would mean a lot to them, we were happy to go ahead, provided we weren’t expected to make any promises we didn’t intend to keep (ie. to bring him up in the catholic faith – we wouldn’t do a very good job of it, not being catholic and all!). I may not go to church, but I do respect it and hold it as a sacred place, therefore I am not willing to lie by swearing to things which I do not believe or intend to do. I feel that way about any place of worship.

I do want Zac to have religious education. I want him to learn about different religions so that he can make up his own mind one day. To that end, I was happy for his grandparents (Rafe’s parents) to make promises regarding his religious education and I will be happy if they wish to take him to church sometimes and share with him their faith.

The priest was every bit as lovely, warm and welcoming as Sue and Jed had described. He was extremely respectful both of where Rafe and I stood on the matter, and his parent’s feelings and beliefs. The ceremony was just beautiful – if I had’ve known beforehand what the ceremony would be like, I wouldn’t have had a moment’s hesitation. As it was, we had only experienced one other catholic christening in which we became godparents to one of our nieces. It was a very by-the-book (literally – we all had a copy to read from for the christening ceremony) and I had no problem with the majority of it. I’m happy to renounce satan – I never expected we’d get along anyway! But there was one part which I did not believe, but swore to out of respect for the role we were accepting (having been told by my sister-in-law that their expectation of godparents fell more in line with ours, whereby godparents are there for their godchild to offer guidance and support, for the child’s spiritual life but also other aspects of life, rather than being someone dedicated to ensure the child is brought up in the particular faith). I was not comfortable claiming to believe something which I did not and did not want to be in a position again where I would lie in a church.

This ceremony was very diffierent, with some aspects taken from the book, but most catered to the individual situation. The priest spoke about the difference between belonging to a church and believing, and welcomed Zac into the church as belonging, saying that it would be up to Zac to find his belief. He also spoke about giving Zac his name, and that he is his own person; by giving him a name, we do not own him and that he will be given many names throughout his life.In some ways he reminded me of our lovely friend Jack, who has been the celebrant for our wedding and my mum’s funeral.

The timing of the ceremony wasn’t ideal unfortunately. We arrived in Yea just as Zac was ready for his next feed. We quickly changed him into his christening clothes and had time to give him the bottle of expressed breast milk which I had ready, but not enough time for the bottle of formula. This left Zac still hungry and looking for the rest of his feed for the ceremony – crying abounded. The cermeony itself was very intimate, consisting of us, Rafe’s parents and mine. My folks stood in for Zac’s godparents who live in Singapore  – apparently this is a common occurance. I wanted to take photos during the ceremony but it wasn’t really appropriate with the intimacy. Unfortunately after the ceremony I was so focused on feeding Zac, and then getting to the restaurant on time that I didn’t ask anyone to take a photo of Rafe, Zac and I. We don’t really have many photos of the day and I do wish that we had one of our little family. It wasn’t until we arrived home and I was changing Zac out of his outfit that I realised we didn’t have photos of us, or of Zac’s gorgeous outfit.

We do have some of the grandparents though…