How Do Atheists Celebrate the Birth of a Baby?

This may not be very helpful, but, um… Birthday Party?

Birthday celebrations can be as big or as small as you want them to be. Just invite all the family and friends. It could also be a family picnic or pot-luck. I don’t appreciate ceremonies myself so I won’t suggest any.

Heh was going to say bday party too!

We had a birthday party for our elder daughter and will do the same for our younger daughter. I’m in Denmark, which isn’t a very religious place, but christenings are entrenched in the culture and expected to happen. I refused to do a christening, and just sent out birthday party invitations to all the extended family and everyone. It was very well-received. No one questioned it; they just showed up with all the presents they would have brought to a christening and had a great time without having to attend a church service.

If a ceremony is important to you, UUs or Humanist congregations will happily do name-giving or child-welcoming ones. Personally, I was happy to skip that part and just have cake!

Yeah, me too, Birthday Party? Is that not normal? Why is it religious to have a Baby Shower? And why are we atheist forbidding ourselves to have ceremonies?
Baby Shower=Congratulating the Mom to be; share knowledge; give support
Marriage=Congratulating the new born family, being a witness to somebody else big commitment, give support.
Funerals=Supporting the family that lose a person, share stories, keep the memory of the deceased alive.
I do all that, well, being a male means no Baby showers but I send my wife 🙂
And I hate funerals because I cannot turn off my empathy, too much pain.
I love marriages! (even when they are inside a church/temple) 😀

There are also humanist baby-naming ceremonies, that mimic Baptism without the woo. If you think your baby is too old for baby-naming there are apparently versions for slightly older children. Look online to see if there are any Humanist chapters in your area. Here’s one place to start. They’ll probably be able to put you in contact with a celebrant that can help you plan the ceremony.

My husband’s family is very Catholic so every cousin who has a baby has a Baptism even if they themself is not religious. We go to so many of thease, give extra gifts, set aside another day to drive away from home….. ugg. Yeah, I guess I’m a little annoyed! Our kids have not been Baptised nor do we feel a need to have ANOTHER get together even if secular.
I think a birthday party would be a fine occasion for welcomeing.

I’m confused. I thought we’re supposed to eat the babies?

Seriously though, a birthday party is the way to go. Our daughter’s first birthday is next month, and we’re celebrating by taking her and our friends to the Pittsburgh Irish Fest, a somewhat non-traditional birthday party, but for sure a party!

In the TV show “Army Wives” there is also a non-religious couple and they had a very beautiful welcome-ceremony for the baby. They even had some sort of “godparents” who vowed to care for the baby when the parents couldn’t and that they would treat her as their own child. There was a speaker who pronounced good wishes for the child’s life, too. I thought it was a good alternative to a baptism and if I ever have children I will probably do something like this, too.

I’m kinda confused… isn’t a baby shower just a party before the actual birth to give Mom-to-be a bunch of presents?

Just a plain old first birthday seems good to me, why does there need to be a ceremony? Even when I’ve had cousins or friends baptize their kids it was a separate day/event from their first birthday

Have a birthday party. At age one it’s for the family, not the kid anyway.

You could take a cure from adoptive families. We find all sorts of reasons to celebrate, especially those of us who are not positive of our child’s actual birthdate. We are gearing up to have a celebration of the one-year anniversary of the day our son joined our family. Just pick something special to your family and throw a party!

Birthday party.

And, since it is her first birthday, be sure to let her have her own cake (with lots of icing) and have the cameras standing by.

I know I’m a bit odd, but if these people have not made any plans to see me or my daughter after all this time, I think I’d write them off. First baby is big event in someone’s life, and if your “friends” didn’t want to share in your joy, they can’t be very good friends.

Of course, if this is more about getting attention and gifts, by all means, invite everyone you’ve ever met, even if they’ve shown no interest in your life in recent years.

Additionally, I’d rethink the idea of exposing the child to conservative christian relatives. Yes, she’s only a year old, but it’s good to get the precedent set now. It’s easy for adults to deflect their negativity, but kids are impressionable and easily hurt. I still remember all the tricks and hurtful lies crazy right-wing relatives told me as a kid. I wish my parents had had the balls to take a stand and keep them away from us kids. We all get enough of that crap from the rest of the world — do kids need it from your circle of friends and relatives, too?

My family has been spread out all over the country, and as it turned out, the ones who didn’t make a push to come visit during the first year became the people that my kids–now 31 and 27–have only seen once or twice in their whole lives–when we made the effort and bought the plane tickets. You can’t force familial closeness by staging ceremonies–even when there are no serious religious differences.

I know it’s become more usual to hold birthday parties for one-year-olds, but we never did them until the kids were old enough to participate actively and start to socialize with their peers. If the family isn’t naturally close, parties for one-year-olds can look like another shakedown for gifts.

With both my kids I was too frazzled to want to have anything big like that. I preferred to introduce the sprouts to people in small groups, one family at a time. Different strokes for different folks.

But since the kidlet is approaching 1, I agree with others who have said why not just a first birthday party.

Mmmm, reading the comments I also sort of agree with Brent. I don’t get the need for atheists to come up with new ceremonies. But if it makes them happy, then why not? Just not something I’m interested in.

in my opinion if you try to do anything more than a birthday party it could cause tension or even anger throughout the family. By throwing a humanist naming ceremony or some sort of other non-religious ceremony, you’d be pointing out the fact that you AREN’T having a baptism. Which is completely okay, if you don’t mind disappointing a few family members.

Baby showers aren’t religious at all…at least i’ve never been to a religious one. And in all reality the religious aspects of a baptism end the second you leave the church. All the baptisms i’ve been to (quite a few, being raised catholic) were just like going to church and then having a regular family reunion type thing afterwards…with presents for the baby of course. So yea…pretty much the same thing as a big birthday party.

There are also humanist baby-naming ceremonies, that mimic Baptism without the woo. If you think your baby is too old for baby-naming there are app

I don’t have children, but I do have a lot of pals who have had kids in the recent years so I’ve actually given this some thought.

I suspect we’ll wind up having “X’s First Mud Cake Party”, and just wind up having some garden party where the kids of all ages are encouraged to get dirty under supervision of their parents and have some snap-happy people take lots of photos so people can add to their own family albums.

As soon as you start thinking about inviting folks to a “First”, you can get creative from there and plan in advance. Perhaps “Baby’s First Meal & Wine Tasting”, and encourage everyone to bring a soft food that they had success with and you can get a big giant group to help figure out what your baby likes to eat.

Doesn’t everyone throw a huge birthday party for the first birthday? I thought that was pretty standard and I too am befuddled as to what the heck’s religious about a baby shower. Are we sure this isn’t a Poe?

What’s with all this “birthday party” stuff? I had my first birthday party 12 months after I was born. What would this be, the kid’s zeroeth birthday party?
Let the adults have a party if they want, the baby will just be busy pooping itself. In fact, at most of my parties, that’s what half my guests do.

A cookout! (Or a barbecue.)

My husband and I have a cookout every time we want to get the family together, and we announce the intention of the cookout either before or during the event, depending on the nature of the event. It isn’t necessarily a family tradition in general; we just have a nice yard for cookouts, so people come when invited.

Tell them ahead of time that it’s the baby’s first cookout, and I’m sure you’ll find yourself smothered in baby gifts. And drowning in leftover potato salad. 🙂

fact is though, as atheist, they probably aren’t trying to force a belief on the child so a ritual wouldn’t be needed, though a birthday party is always expected!!!

Joining the chorus of birthday party.

That said, one is a much better age to do something like that as they will have a bit of personality.

Love my daughter, but at 3 weeks old, not so exciting to look at.

I don’t know that you need any sort of ceremony at all, but you could easily tie it to the new home too. “Come meet our child and see our new home!”

If you really want some sort of ritual, possibly look into old monarchy presentations – something along the line of “this is our heir, see that they are healthy”. I assume there are such ceremonies scattered throughout societies with hereditary rulership and some might either not have religious elements or be edited for your needs.

Another vote for birthday party here. I see no need for ceremonies, but isn’t a baby’s first birthday usually a time for friends and family members to come together and celebrate? That’s how it’s always been in my family. I’d just recommend throwing a party and inviting everyone who’s important to you.

Yeah, a birthday party seems obvious. If I were planning to have an event to welcome a baby to the world, I’d probably just throw a party. The invitations would say “Come meet the newest member of our family!”. Seems like a great reason to throw a party, and has nothing to do with religion.

I didn’t read all the other comments, so I’m sure this has already been mentioned multiple times… but there’s a little something called a “Birthday Party” that we celebrate in my family. I’d like to say that I’m not being sarcastic, but that would be a lie.

In all honesty, though, is it really such a strange concept? I was not raised religiously at all and I know for my first birthday (and every year hence) my parents threw a birthday party for me. And even cousins of mine that were being raised in religious households had 1st Birthday parties thrown for them. I always assumed that it was something that crossed most cultural lines in one way or another.

Bruce, not a challenge at all, just say, “nope, no need to spend our money on that silly stuff, we are getting her a PONY!”

As for the OP, How about a 1 year birthday party and a good photographer?

We did a naming ceremony for our son, which was a very simple get-together of family and friends. We had everyone write on a leaf (it was autumn at the time) and send it to us in advance (those overseas made paper leaves). On the leaf we asked people to write their wishes for our son – they ranged from “be happy” to really lovely and thoughtful wishes for a healthy and happy life. Then on the day we read all the leaves out, read a poem, gave an explanation of why we chose the names we did for him, and then we all had lunch together. We later laminated the leaves and made a mobile from them.

SickoftheUS’ comment is wildly inappropriate. If you didn’t read, this person has a child. They aren’t thinking about having a child, the child exists in the world and is loved. I am pro choice and respect bodily autonomy. Hypothetical post about children and child-rearing? Go for it. You can choose to have a child or not.

But commenting on someone else’s baby (actual, living breathing baby) like that is just tacky and out of place. I wish the internet weren’t so cruel sometimes.

For a way to incorporate some kind of ceremony or new tradition, you could try something like this:

Provide a blank book (like a scrapbook or something similar) and ask your guests to write in it with advice for later in life or well wishes, and sign it with their name. It would make for an awesome gift later in your child’s life, maybe for a high school graduation gift. That way your friends and family can feel like there was something meaningful happening at the gathering, and makes it all about your daughter.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do!

um..
“Skip the child, and just invite people over for a fun party. THAT will be something most of your friends can get behind.”

Sorry, that doesn’t seem to agree with your explanation. Anyone who doesn’t want to go to whatever party/celebration/ceremony doesn’t have to.

I respect your opinion- I don’t have kids, my partner is adopted, and I have friends who are staunchly anti-reproducing, and some friends with kids. My main point is that whether you intended it or not, I feel your post came off as insensitive and mean to the parent(s).

Why does there need to be an “atheist” way to do anything? Just do what you want to do.