Baptism

“At the beautiful moment when our baby will officially hear his name, we would like to be flooded with love and true wishes.

So we invite you all to be beside us on Saturday 27th May at 7pm at the church of the Virgin Mary before she became embroiled in all that messy business involving angels, babies, husbands and stuff.”

This is the fifth local baptism to which we have been invited. So far, all babies have been male and their baptisms have had a blue theme. Baptisms here are themed and choreographed to an unimaginable degree, as big as Irish weddings, but without the dinner-dance banquet jobbie afterwards.

The baby is now about fifteen months old and is ready to be presented to God. His Godparents will let God and all the rest of us know what his name is to be. We all know that his name will be “John” because that is his dad's dad's name and that is what his mum says to him into the pram, but here in Greece, there is always the potential for the unexpected. If for example, the chosen Godparents decide to fly in the face of tradition and announce this little boy's name as Nebuchadnezzar, then that will be his name, no room for manoeuvre. And the chosen Godparents are locally famously capricious, we could end up here with a little boy called Sue :-) Even his mother had her name accidentally abbreviated by her Godparents at her baptism a generation ago.

I am really looking forward to this event! The baby's mother is a stylist and Oh Boy does she do it well! We were invited to the wedding and the only clue to the theme was a lilac-coloured ribbon to seal the invitation card. I have previously described Greek weddings; where people enter and leave, turn to face the other way, behave much more as though they are at the post office than getting married, but there is a grand finale, a crescendo, and it just so happens that the mother of this little boy knows how to steer this perfectly. At her wedding, with only a lilac-coloured ribbon as a clue, when they exited the church newly married to greet all their guests, the trees in front of the church all bore small glass candle-holders with lavender-scented candles and the confetti provided to guests was not coloured paper, it was not rice, it was lavender-seeds!

Today's clues are; baby blue, beige, textile, stars. I cannot wait to see how she has put all of this together to make a crescendo for her little son.