Wednesday 16 July 2008

The christening gift.

Oh dear.

So we attended a christening at the end of May. The beautiful baby girl is the firstborn of an old friend and his wife. Becoming a parent at 26 distinguished our friend somewhat from the rest of the original clan, some of whom are pushing 40, greying sports car drivers who have yet to become homeowners or husbands, let alone fathers.

We hadn't been invited to see the baby during the four months of her life preceding the christening and, whilst that didn't offend us in the slightest (we understand that new families might be ever so slightly preoccupied), we were surprised to receive an invitation to the christening, which turned out to be a fairly intimate affair.

The ceremony took place on a glorious, sunny Sunday, typical of late spring and one that we may well have slept through without the obligation to attend a morning church service on the opposite side of the island. The ensuing "reception" was no shabby garden party at the home of the proud parents or even prouder grandparents, however. Times have changed since we were children, it seems, as we were presented with a wedding-style buffet in a hotel suite, full bar and handmade cake. Fortunately a seating plan, speeches and the less pleasant aspects of typical formal occasions were absent. The warm weather coaxed guests outside to enjoy their drinks beside the pool, most remaining there in an indolent, merry haze until early evening.

This same laidback attitude was the one in which "daddy" circulated during lunch, collecting our gifts for his newly baptised daughter. After great deliberation, endless discussions at home and two Saturday afternoons scouting the local bookshops, we decided upon a large, hardbacked volume of illustrated children's stories, complete with matching bookplate. We wrote the bookplate, stuck it on the inside and wrapped the book in paper printed in pink with christening motifs (fonts, basically) and messages. I was embarrassingly pleased with this purchase, picked out weeks in advance from a specialist shop I'd spotted when visiting a friend. We Sellotaped our card to the outside and then tried to avoid leaving sweaty marks on the gift as we waited in the hot churchyard.

In the aftermath of the christening we drank water and tea and popped painkillers to ease our headaches from daytime drinking, took our clothes to the dry-cleaners and returned them to the wardrobe for another occasion, wondered who might be next to host a christening and returned to the quotidien staples of jobworking, houseworking and wanting to sleep longer in the mornings.

Then I, ever mindful of etiquette, commented that we had not been thanked for our christening gift nor for our attendance on the day. Considering the aforementioned intimacy of the event I presumed that writing, telephoning or even e-mailing a brief thank you to all concerned could and would be in order. As the weeks passed I had to admit that this assumption of mine had been wrong.

Until Monday. A card arrived in the post. It thanked us for our gift - the book - and someone else's - a soft toy. We laughed and then deliberated. Is it better to overlook the over-thanking and to avoid appearing pedantic by contacting the parents to notify them that the book was our present and the soft toy someone else's? Or is it our duty to inform them that the donor of the soft toy should be identified and thanked?

We still have no idea. The card sits on the otherwise pristine dining table, waiting to be displayed (we take credit for the soft toy) or responded to (we go pedantic).