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Archiver > TMG > 2005-03 > 1109870067


From: "DeAnna Burghart" <>
Subject: RE: [TMG] Baptisms and Christenings
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2005 09:14:27 -0800
In-Reply-To: <000001c51fef$21a4f230$6800a8c0@PARAATHHQ1>


Personally, I'd always had the understanding that a baptism (by any means)
was a sanctification and induction into the church fellowship, supposedly
but not necessarily through conscious choice of the petitioner. Christening
I've always vaguely distinguished as a naming ceremony/consecration, usually
in association with a baptism as defined above (i.e. acceptance into the
church). Adults or babies can be baptised, but generally only babies are
christened. USUALLY. (That's my layperson's understanding.)

Genealogically, I do as Jon and others suggested -- I stick exactly to the
term used in the records. The only influence of my above lay understanding
of the terms is the illusion that christenings are somewhat more reliable as
indicators of birth dates than baptisms. I've never thought of creating a
separate tag in a separate tag group for a non-infant baptism, as the dates
available for someone usually make any discrepancy pretty obvious. For
infant (or near-infant) baptisms that may indicate a birth date, I create a
Birth tag and assign a date, with appropriate surety, comments, citations,
and rationale. In other words, anyone who has a baptism record also has a
birth tag, but not everyone who has a birth tag has a baptism tag.

<tosses 2 cents on the table> ;)

DeAnna

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
DeAnna Burghart
TMG Cheat Sheets (Word and PDF)
http://members.cox.net/danieleb765/genealogy/





-----Original Message-----
From: SIDERATOS, DEBBIE (PARALLON-ATH)
[mailto:]
Sent: Thursday, March 03, 2005 4:47 AM
To:
Subject: [TMG] Baptisms and Christenings




I've noticed and have wondered for a while now that TMG has both a
baptism and a christening tag. Because I don't distinguish between the
2, I've been using both and now, 6 months later, I see that of the 14
ppl who I've actually had the time to create such a tag for, half are
baptisms and half are christenings but I meant them in the same way.. as
in take a naked screaming 6 month old baby and have a 100 yr old priest
(or better a monk) submerge it in an equally old 100 year old golden
swimming pool.. (yeah my big fat greek christening hehe)
Why would I use one instead of the other? If it's just a matter of
preference, I'll choose one and stick with it.

Thanks guys :)
Deb



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