Alternatives to christenings etc

Saturday, June 21, 2008

J and I are not at all religious. I was christened as a babe, he was not, but neither of us are church goers or remotely religious. I like to think I am spiritual, but I am not a fan of organized religion.

So, when Finn was born, we did not christen, baptise or otherwise him. We would have had a naming day type celebration, but at that time, we were still in Warrnambool, and family was a considerable distance. So we didn't do anything.

With child #2 on the way, I have been thinking about this again. I don't want to give it a naming day celebration that Finn didn't have, so I thought I might do something combined for them, of my own invention! This will be our last child, so it could be some sort of completed family type thing... And if we do, do we get some sort of 'replacements' for godparents. And call them something else.. guides? What? Something non spiritual, but I would like to have some kind of people each child knows they can turn to etc.

Help!

1 comment:

Kirsten said...

We did something like this for each of our two - we just called it a blessing, we wrote out our own blessings for them and then asked other people to contribute theirs, from their own spiritual (or otherwise) beliefs. We did ask people to be 'god' parents, even though half of them don't believe in god. We just redefined it for our own purposes.

Like you, we wanted there to be other adults who would take a special interest in them, and who they would feel they could go to if they didn't want to talk to us when they're older. It hasn't really worked out that way though. Liam's proved to be pretty useless for the post. Kaely's are better (so far), and one of them is my sister, who we asked to be an honourary extra godparent to Liam as well, because he worships her. Of course, she finally (after four+ years) has her own baby on the way now, so I'm thinking that will change those dynamics too.

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