Baptisms and dance parties.

Ordinarily I think of American infant baptisms as short, sweet, and to-the-point.  At least in my experience, the ceremony was always pretty simple: the parents carry their swaddled child to the front of the church, the biological and church family promise to raise the child in the faith, and the pastor prays and dribbles water on the infant's head, after which the startled, screaming baby is paraded through the sanctuary to the sighs and ahhs of the congregants.  Afterwards there's sometimes cake and more cooing over the little one, but in general that's about it.  It's a welcome to the family of faith, a powerful symbol of the way God chooses us before we can ever choose Him -- but it's not usually, in my experience, all that celebratory.  Perhaps I'm just not very sensitive, not having any children of my own -- but it always has seemed to me that the welcoming of a new baby into the family of God deserves a big ol' party, where everyone comes and dances and sings and eats and celebrates the promise and hope of this new life.

Well, on Sunday we did just that.  One of our coworkers at FNO, Andreea, had recently had a baby girl named Teodora (Teia for short), and on Sunday she was baptized into the Orthodox church.  It was an intricate ceremony, one I need to do some reading on to understand.  Romanian Orthodox baptisms involve the godparents heavily, while the parents simply observe -- it was the godmother who held Teodora throughout the entire service, except for when little Teia was taken by the priest around the front of the sanctuary, to bow in reverence before the icons of Jesus and the apostles.  The baby is brought in wearing frilly, fancy baptism clothes, but all the clothes (even the diaper) are removed for the moment of baptism itself, which involves the baby being totally submerged or, in this case, being held over a basin while an entire pitcher of water is dumped over her entire body.  (No little sprinkle-and-dab in this case!)  Then the baby is laid back down and dressed in new, white clothes -- symbolic of the "new creation" that he or she becomes with baptism into the family of God.  Before being dressed, the priest dabs oil on the baby's chest, forehead, ears, shoulders, and feet, symbolizing the protection and anointing of God over every part of the child.  Once re-dressed, the priest carefully snips hair from the child's head as an offering to God, also symbolizing the way that God knows and numbers every hair of our heads; this lock of hair is given to the family and kept as a remembrance for years.  And eventually, the priest takes the baby and brings her to the altar, to the front of the church which is, in Orthodox churches, the holy place, and sets her gently down to rest.  Only after the child is laid gently at the feet of Jesus, symbolically, is the baptism over.  The father swooped in to pick up Teodora, many pictures were taken, and there was much rejoicing.  (Here's a link to a liturgy if you want to read more.)

We headed straight from the baptism to a local restaurant, where Andreea had arranged a party to celebrate little Teia's baptism.  It was decorated like a wedding: white gauze draped the stairs, white cloths covered each chair, and pink bows and butterflies decorated the table.  There was an abundance of food and a DJ, who gently teased people into dancing.  We ate and ate and ate, first full plates of meats and cheeses and vegetables, then -- an hour or two later -- sarmale and mamaliga, the famous, delicious, traditional Romanian stuffed cabbage rolls and polenta, topped with a thick sour cream.  In between we sampled from big bowls of fresh cherries and apricots and nectarines, juicy and delicious, dripping down our chins, and drank homemade wine from grapes and brandy from summer cherries.  There was a beautiful cake, bedecked in pink and purple, sparklers burning merrily on top while we sang the Romanian birthday song to Teia in jubilant voices.  And we danced -- bobbing and twisting, some of us terrible, grandparents holding little Teodora adoringly as they swayed to the music, the younger crowd moving sexily to the beat, everyone joining in the circle and clasping hands for the traditional Romanian hora, little kids spinning and running through the dance floor for the sheer joy of it.  When I eventually left at around 9:30pm, the pork and potatoes and cabbage salad course was still coming, and the music was still playing.  Oh, what a Romanian party: eating and dancing, laughing and teasing, celebrating and supporting and loving.  What a baptism.  What a joyful celebration... a big ol' party.

Welcome to the family, Teodora.

The FNO women, Briana, and Teodora!

The beautiful, beautiful Orthodox church.