Christening or naming ceremony

According to Rachel Fry from My Baby Celebration, planning a christening or naming ceremony is very easy to do.  Naming ceremonies and Christening ceremonies are back in fashion with new parents keen to copy celebrities like Geri Halliwell, the Beckhams and Charlotte Church.

In recent years more and more people have chosen to get their little ones baptised but the trend has seen children going through the ceremony at a later age.

During the 1940s and 50s babies would be christened at a few weeks of age but now most children are aged 6 months plus.

Rachel Fry believes that is because parents are so busy and said: “People do want to have the celebration and there are celebrity christenings in the news…...that makes people think about it a bit more. People are put off because they don’t know what the options are or they’re extremely busy during those first months.”

However, there are many more options available to parents. Rather than having Christenings, some parents have opted for Naming Ceremonies.

She said: “Both Christenings and Naming Ceremonies have similar elements in that they welcome the child into the community. The difference is that in a Christening you’re welcoming the child into the Church community where as in a Naming ceremony you’re welcoming the child into your own community of family and friends. The Church of England also offer now a Thanksgiving Service which is a lesser known ceremony and in that service the parents can give Thanks to God for the gift of their child but they don’t have the full commitment of baptism.”

So what are the main differences between a Christening and a Naming Ceremony?

Rachel explained: "In a Naming Ceremony the promises are made by the parents and the supporting adults. They are of love and support for the child where as in a Christening the promises are committing the child to be brought up in the Christian faith."

Naming ceremonies can be carried out almost anywhere. However, if you want a registrar to officiate over proceedings the service will have to take place where civil ceremonies are currently held.

Rachel added: "You can have a celebrant to perform the ceremony and they’ll welcome the child. You can customise the ceremony quite a bit and you can add in poems or readings. You can make reference to absent friends and family. You can make it more into a ceremony which is very personal and meaningful to you. A lot of hotels, golf clubs and restaurants are approved for a civil ceremony so you can have that there. The British Humanist Association also provide celibrants for Naming Ceremonies. You can have Godparent equivalents but they’re not generally called Godparents because you don’t generally have religion in your naming ceremony. They are called special adults or supporting adults some people actually call them oddparents."

When Rachel gave birth to her son she decided to have a Naming Ceremony as opposed to a Christening and told us: "I myself am not Christened and my husband isn’t particularly religious either. We did feel for our circumstances it would’ve been a little hypocritical to have a Christening in Church when we didn’t really believe. We still wanted to celebrate though. It was a big thing for us, our child came along quite a long time after we were married and we wanted to celebrate with our friends and family. I saw when we registered the birth that the local registry office were offering Naming Ceremonies and so we went down that route. I’m really, really pleased that we did and it was a fantastic day."

For more information about Christenings contact your local Church. For Naming Ceremonies your local registry office will be able to offer help and advice.

The full interview all about a Christening naming ceremony can be be found on our podcasts page.