I Suck At Christenings

I think my baby daughter (Briana) has had the most parties of anyone her age. For anyone curious, she is almost four months old and after yesterday she has already had four parties in her name. She had a red egg and ginger party (the customary Chinese one month party), her baby shower (she attended because she was born prematurely), a 100 day party (the party she should have had at one month were it not for her being born premature), and now... her christening party. Too bad I suck at christenings.

Briana is averaging roughly a party a month. I guess it is to be expected. She was, after all, born on St. Patrick's Day. Suffice to say, I am dreading the day she turns 21. Regardless, yesterday was her rite of baptism within the Catholic church.

Were it solely up to me, Briana would not have been baptized because I am not one for religion. She would have original sin like her father. I would be okay with that. Unfortunately, other people probably would not.

Needless to say, I was definitely not looking forward to yesterday. Besides the whole religious significance of the day, I would have to say hosting a large party after the christening was not exactly high on my to-do list. There were just too many things that were potentially stressful for a day that I was very indifferent to. Those things included the baptism itself, renovating the bathroom, inviting family and friends, cleaning the house, cleaning the house again after the party, etc. For Karen, it was probably worse because it was mainly her family that was invited.

The christening itself was not all bad. I thought the priest was good. He is definitely more comedic and more sociable than other priests that I have seen. Were I Catholic, I probably would go to his parish just because I think he's funny... and pretty knowledgeable about things.

I had a quick little Bible lesson on christenings... during the christening. For example, I learned there were three holy oils: the Oil of the Sick; the Oil of Catechumens (which I lovingly refer to as the Oil of Cat and Humans), which strengthens a person for their struggle between good and evil; and the Holy Chrism which apparently is the most important oil of them all. Perhaps that is probably why the Holy Chrism is so pungent... being mixed with syrup. That oil is used to anoint one with the Holy Spirit. In other words... you're in after you get it!

Luckily for Briana, she got the Oil of Cat and Humans... and the Holy Chrism. And now her path towards guilt and more guilt begins. Interestingly enough, I also found it a little funny that within a family of so-called Catholics, not one of them could tell me what the symbol displayed on the church altar was.

The symbol on the altar looked like a P interposed with an X. It turns out, the symbol actually is a superimposition of two letters on top of one another... just not the letter P and X. The symbol is called a chi rho. According to my friend Wikipedia, the symbol "is formed by superimposing the first two letters in the Greek spelling of the word Christ". Thus, "ch" is the chi, "r" is the rho. Put them together... and you get chi rho. Thanks to Constantine I, the symbol stuck.

Anyway, the christening was good. I was tempted to do something that I had witnessed during another christening I had attended... and that was to ask the priest "are we all done?" with eager enthusiasm. I, of course, decided to refrain, which can be hard for me sometimes.

I think everyone who attended the party after the christening had a good time. That is always one of those stressful things while being the host... making sure everyone is enjoying themselves. For the most part, I think everyone mingled nicely. They shared holding duties of Briana very well.

I believe Karen's grandmother even got to use the newly renovated first floor bathroom. She was, however, not the first one to christen the bathroom. That honor actually goes to Karen. My BFF (Kerry) had the pleasure of being the second one to christen the bathroom. After that, I lost track of who went to the bathroom. I got a little sidetracked with being the host.

Speaking of Kerry, I must say thanks to her and my other friend (Andrea) who attended Briana's christening. Truth be told, I am always surprised when friends want to attend these things for my daughter. I definitely was not expecting them to attend. Logically speaking, I do not know why they would even want to. Nevertheless, it was nice that they cared so much about Briana. So thank you both!

I should probably thank Hot Amy too. Although she did not make the christening itself, she did make a little appearance with her fiance (Mark) at the party. It was nice that they were able to stop by with ice cream! Yum! There's always room for ice cream.

One of the things that I dislike about hosting large parties is not having enough time to socialize with everyone. It's almost like I am Catholic. I have these feelings of guilt when I do not spend enough time with all the people who cared enough to attend the party for my daughter. So for people like Karen's grandparents and Karen's aunt (Margie) and Aunt Margie's husband (Tom), I feel bad for not really socializing that much with them. Same thing goes with Karen's cousin (Matthew) and Karen's Uncle (Paul). There's just too many people to see within a given time frame.

I'm sure everyone understands, but it's still a feeling that I am not particularly fond of. I just hope everyone had a good time. At the end of the day yesterday, Karen and I were just so tired and just so relieved. We were definitely happy that the stress concerning Briana's christening was over.

And now we can wait to stress about her 1 year birthday...