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They christen, trains, boats, and planes, and elephants. And, of course, babies. They often use the best champagne for the former. For the latter, in religious traditions, they use water and prayer.
The application of the term "to christen" is often a misnomer because of the widespread use to which it is applied.
The term properly refers to the acceptance of the recipient of a christening, or Baptism, into the church of Christ. It means to "bring to Christ."
But the term "christening" is used now in everyday language to denote the giving of a name to a person, place or thing when, in the strict sense, it refers to making a person one of Christ’s faithful.
Name giving ceremonies, sometimes referred to as "secular christenings" are not actually christenings in the sense that anyone is being welcomed into a church. A christening, as in giving a name, can be done with no religious connotation whatsoever. Even Pagans have baby-naming ceremonies. The ceremonies, attended by family and friends and other members of their fraternity, celebrate the naming of the person, and are increasingly used by non religious parents to initiate their children by name into the community.
The act of christening infants in Christian traditions happens as part of the important ceremony of Baptism, which is the formal, religious initiation of the child into the life of Christian churches.
Baptism had been practiced by the Jews for centuries prior to Jesus. It was the ritual equivalent of Confession in which Jewish people made a spiritual cleansing. Men did it once a week, women once a month. Jesus changed the tradition to make it relate to the entering of the Christian faith.
In Christian and other churches, the child is christened or baptized as soon as possible after birth – immediately if the child is ill - and has sponsors, such as a godfather and godmother who make declarations of faith in the child’s name and who promise to attist them in matters of faith and morals.
It’s not unusual for Christians or Westerners to unwittingly ask non Christians , say Muslims, for their Christian names, and to be told "we don’t have a Christian name because we are not Christians." They have first names, not Christian names, just as Pagans can have Pagan names.
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