Christening Dates
Am I wrong in assuming christening dates are not blessing dates. I have a family member who inputted blessing dates in that column.
Answers
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That would rather depend on what you or your family member mean by "blessing date". I would guess this is a religious rite or sacrament, but in what religion/denomination? Is it something that occurs shortly after birth?
The christening field exists mostly for historical reasons: it's used as a substitute for birth data when the only available record for a person's birth is a baptismal register. When you have both available, you can choose to leave the christening blank. (I sometimes enter it anyway if the church wasn't local, because indexes often record only the event place, not the residence, so knowing where the church was for the baptism helps in finding marriage and death records.) The birth-proxy usage could theoretically apply to any religion's "welcome baby" rite or sacrament, but I've never actually encountered a situation where it was necessary.
(Note that I deliberately used "baptism" and "christening" alternately. They're exactly the same thing in every language besides English.)
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Wrong? No. Right? No.
Depends on the definition you want to use. From spending years on this these boards and seeing multiple discussions of what that field means I've concluded that there are three primary definitions that different people use and that there are some strongly held opinions on the point. These definitions seem to be:
- A infant naming ceremony held shortly after birth, usually within the first month, usually of a religious nature but does not need to be.
- A Catholic/Protestant infant baptism.
- One part of the two part Catholic/Protestant ritual of naming and baptizing an infant.
I have run into individuals who would only put information into the christening spot if water was involved. I have meet others who will put in information for all events in which the naming of the child took place.
I really don't think it matters all that much as long as there is a source and if necessary a reason statement that makes crystal clear what the event actually was.
These questions were easier to cope with when people each had their own forms that each one could fill out exactly as they wanted and ignore other people's opinions. In Family Tree we have to work together and that does mean compromise. One important part of that is asking oneself, "is the way this other person is recording information hurting anything?" If not and if the information is accurately presented, documented, and explained, why not let it stand?
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Please confirm what you mean by "blessing dates". I imagine you are referring to the ordinance of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as described at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_and_blessing_of_children.
However, as @Gordon Collett does not acknowledge this probability perhaps I am wrong. To an "outsider" reading this, it would appear to be closely related to the event called a baptism or christening in Anglican, Roman Catholic and other denominations that practise this (generally) in infancy. But, I imagine only an LDS member (Elder?) could really give a "ruling" on whether it would be appropriate to enter a blessing date under the vital section headed "Christening".
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( @Paul W , I was trying to keep things as general as possible. I have seen members of the church who absolutely, always put their relative's Naming and Blessing of infants down as christenings because they are christenings and other members who would never do that because they are not christenings. I've never seen anything official. I have a church manual on genealogy from 1993 that states one can use a christening date to identify someone but it gives no definition as to what a christening is. It sort of comes down to do you view the use of the term "christening" the same whether you are christening a child or christening a boat or does christening a child have to include baptizing it? I do have an unofficial reference work by a church leader who clearly states he is only writing his own opinions that was very popular back in the 1960s but rarely referenced any more in which he wrote "... infant children are named in blessings given by the elders, but this is not accompanied by infant baptism and is not properly called christening." These days you can get in some pretty good arguments at church if you quote his work to support a point.)
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Looks like you got a cat by the tail with your question. In all good faith it really is not that important how anyone uses this (christening) category. What is of utmost importance is that we all love one another with our whole heart. What is most important is we have information that has sources to back it up. Double check the information that you are entering for accuracy. If a family member wants to put blessing dates in that category so be it. Thank God they are doing family History.
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Christening specifically means the giving of a name. In many churches this was done at the same time as baptism and they are considered one and the same. Technically the blessing of children in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a type of Christening, although it is not called such and does not include baptism. There are plenty of other churches that do not baptize infants as well, but I don't know if they have something like a Christening or not.
At any rate, the Christening field has been the standard for centuries based on other churches' traditions, but mainly for when there was no birth date but only a Christening date. They really ought to have just one date for birth/Christening, with a checkbox if it's a Christening. If they want to include religious dates, then they ought to have separate Christening and baptism dates.
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@Craig G. Smith wrote: "If they want to include religious dates, then they ought to have separate Christening and baptism dates."
I'm sorry, but that comes out as utter nonsense in every language besides English: "they ought to have separate XYZ and XYZ dates."
But even aside from the complete lack of a linguistic distinction in other languages, there isn't a religious one, either. None of the mainstream Christian denominations of Europe have a sacrament for naming an infant that doesn't involve getting said infant wet, and none of the mainstream Christian denominations of Europe have a sacrament for getting an infant wet that doesn't involve giving said infant a name. The same is true if you replace "infant" with "child" or "convert". The two English words are different labels for exactly the same thing.
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A main problem arises in FamilySearch's inconsistent representation of the two terms (Baptism and Christening).
On the one hand, it does treat them as "exactly the same thing". This shows up when there are multiple indexing projects covering the same (baptism / christening) event. Say, for example, the event has been indexed four times, I find it is likely that two of the sources will be categorised by FamilySearch as a "Baptism" and two as a "Christening". That should not matter, except FamilySearch has decided anything categorised as a Christening represents "Vitals" data, but anything as a Baptism as "Other Information".
There are further difficulties with this issue, especially in relation to the substitution of Christening / Baptism details for the Birth data. Even when it comes to infant baptisms / christenings, the event might have taken place a few years after birth: I have several examples of parents having their children baptised / christened all at the same time and the entries do not always show their respective ages / birth dates, giving the appearance they were all born on the same day.
With regards to the "Baptism" that FamilySearch chooses to include in the Other Information section, I assume the idea was for this to represent adult baptism, and the data to be entered there to avoid it being used as proxy data for the birth (in the same way Christening data is - especially where no Birth details have been inputted).
In short, FamilySearch has found itself in a complete mess over this issue, but @Craig G. Smith unfortunately supports the myth that baptism and christening are separate rites / events (which, I admit is stated as a fact on some websites), whereas (at least here in the U.K.) "official" websites of Anglican and Roman Catholic churches use the terms interchangeably. Given the generally accepted facts, I could not possibly go along with his idea that:
"They really ought to have just one date for birth/Christening, with a checkbox if it's a Christening. If they want to include religious dates, then they ought to have separate Christening and baptism dates."
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