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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
My browser kicked me off, so I thought the first letter didn't post. Jeepers. I sound demented, don't I?
Snark, the "why invite people?" part is because it's a sacrament, like getting married. For anyone who is religious (which IMO doesn't likely include anyone who "contacts the church" about the christening and puts it before the wedding) it's a big deal. I'm planning on children with my partner. Were we going to have them baptized, you bet I'd invite people and my Catholic family would be flying out to attend.
save your $20 and stay home!
Yes, I am sure I come off as a dyspeptic party pooper, but I think you probably know what I am getting at. :-)
This prick last week asked me to christen his kid. I charged him seven thousand!
where does this writer say she and her significant other are not spiritual/christian/religious? just because they have had premarital sex, conceived and cohabitated doesn't mean they are atheist or even secularist. not to mention, they could have had some sort of spiritual turn after the proverbial ball was rolling.
anyway, the focus never should have been on whether or not they should be having a christening, but rather, what she should be doing about her hostess situation.
This woman strikes me as a real pill -- here she is, hoping to supposedly celebrate the christening of her child, and all she cares about is how awful her future inlaws are for coming to see her baby be christened (like Cary said-- they were, after all, invited)? Lighten up, lady. One of the first lessons of parenting, and even marriage, is that it's NOT ABOUT YOU anymore, and your convenience and dream-perfect world of How Things Should Be. Being married, and having children, is very often a big dramatic hassle that involves a lot of compromise and the putting of other people before yourself... When you marry HIM, you're marrying his family, with all their good qualities and bad. Get used to it. I feel bad for the guy here-- his family is coming to support this couple and she considers it inconvenient. Yuck.
For starters, you're participating in a religious ceremony that, as I understand it, is a way of symbolically stating your intention to bring your child up in the church. But you're not married yet. Generally the church favors doing things in a certain order: courtship, engagement, marriage, kids. So you have some catching up to do, I would think, as far as living according to church principles.
By similar logic you should criticize gay people who attend church, because "generally the church" favors people not being gay.
But even if this is a church that vigorously frowns on pre-marital sex and out-of-wedlock birth to the point of teaching the parents have jeopardized their immortal souls, it seems reasonable that the hell-bound parents might not want their infant child's soul to be in similar peril. Christening the child could save its little soul from a potential eternity in Limbo (which National Lampoon, as good a source as any, describes as "the place where dead unbaptized infants go and float around in a fiery lake that doesn't hurt as much as Purgatory"). The choice to protect the baby's soul from such a fate might seem like an obvious one to parents who are likely on their way to hell. So perhaps there is less inconsistency here than Cary thinks.
And I'm going to let you all know what it is. The real problem here is that you can't fly to Vegas and get your baby Christened for $100. Wouldn't that be nice? During the party planning you realize that the logistics are impossible, you'll be inundated by lunatic relatives, it will cost you a small fortune and stressing out over meaningless details is taking years off your life. What you want in this situation is a way to say "The hell with it, let's just go to Vegas and do it with only us three. Maybe the grandparents can come if they spring for the flight and hotel". As an added bonus, the Christening Elvis Impersonator wouldn't really care about the whole marriage/conception/birth/christening order thing. He'd probably Christen the entire party for a larger tip, and Cary Tennis couldn't chastise you for being a hypocrite. Nobody is offended when they aren't invited to a quickie Vegas Christening either. Everyone would understand precisely what is going on. Later, when the child matures and decides he/she doesn't care for Christianity, everyone can knowingly proclaim "Oh well, what do you expect with a quicky Vegas Christening anyway?" Maybe I'll move to Vegas and go into buisiness.
Red, I’m with Snark. I’ve never heard of inviting people from across the country for a christening. Maybe it’s an Italian thing? I thought it was just a simple ceremony with immediate family and any close relatives who lived nearby. (I liked snark’s comment about how it was like getting an invitation for a boy’s first baseball game.) From the LW’s description, this sounds more like wedding planning. And I also find it odd that someone who isn’t religious enough to get married before the birth of a child still finds it important to get the child christened. And I’m not saying that because I think you need to be married to have a child, I just feel like it’s a little hypocritical to pick and choose which religious rules you want to follow.
As someone else said: “By similar logic you should criticize gay people who attend church, because "generally the church" favors people not being gay.”
Personally I don’t understand why gays and lesbians attend church. I disagree with many teachings of the church which is why I’m no longer involved in one, though I was raised in a Christian home. I don’t believe premarital sex is wrong, I don’t think that people who don’t believe in Jesus will go to hell and I don’t think being gay is a sin. These are pretty common interpreations of the bible according to most churches, and after reading the bible, I find it hard to disagree with the those interpretations. (I don't agree with the sentiments behind those statements, merely that those are the sentiments the bible is expressing.)
I know this is all off-topic, but I do find it pretty frustrating when people claim to be Christians yet only follow the Christian principles that are convenient for them.
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