Gift guides3 min read
Why a christening gift is really for the person that baby becomes — and how to choose something that is still there in fifteen years.
The person you are buying for will not remember the day. That is the whole difficulty, and it is also the answer.
A baptism gift is not really for the baby. It is for the person that baby becomes — the one who, at nine or nineteen, finds the thing in a cupboard and asks who gave it to them.
Most of what a family receives in a baby’s first year is gone within three. Clothes are outgrown, toys are donated, the soft things wear out.
The test for a baptism gift is simple: will this still exist in fifteen years? Not in perfect condition — just still there, in a box in a loft, with the card still in it.
That rules out most of the obvious choices and makes the decision much easier.
You have a formal role, and the gift is usually understood to reflect it. This is the one people remember.
The Little Blessing keepsake box is the most literal answer to the problem above: it is a wooden box whose job is to still be there later. The christening card goes in it, the candle stub, the certificate, the photograph. Fifteen years on, it is the only place that day still exists.
The Guardian Angel muslin blanket is the gift for the day itself — forty-seven inches square, double-sided muslin, and the kind of thing that ends up in every photograph without anyone planning it.
For something that goes on a wall rather than in a drawer, the Blessed Collection framed print hangs in the nursery and then, usually, in whatever room the child moves to next.
This is the gift most people forget to consider, and often the one most appreciated.
The parents have organised a service, fed a room full of relatives, and are running on very little sleep. A gift addressed to them rather than to the baby lands differently.
The Holy Water Font is cream ceramic, five by seven inches, and goes by a door — a small permanent change to the house the baptism happened from. The Blessed Collection photo frame is the practical version: they will have a photograph from that day and nowhere to put it.
Aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends of the family — you have more freedom, and less obligation to be solemn.
A wall cross is the traditional gift and stays traditional for a reason: it is the thing that ends up in the child’s room and is simply always there.
The handheld olive-stained cross is four inches and costs very little, which makes it the right gift when you are one of many people bringing something. Small, kept, not competing.
At a confirmation the young person reads the card that day. At a baptism, nobody reads it for a decade.
So write it to the person they will be, not the baby they are.
Say who was in the room. Say what the weather did. Say what you promised, if you are a godparent, and say it in words you would be happy to be held to. The card is going in the box with everything else, and it is the only part of the day written in your handwriting.
Date it. People forget to, and fifteen years later the date is half the value.
Baptisms are often arranged with less notice than weddings or confirmations — a few weeks, sometimes less, and frequently scheduled around a visiting relative.
Order as soon as you have the date. If the gift is engraved or personalised, ask before you commit: an unengraved gift that arrives beats a perfect one that does not.