In Sleeping Beauty, the fairy godmothers appear at the princess's christening, which can be interpreted as the naming ceremony or the baptism, because "christening" may be either "baptism" or "naming".

I think christening used to refer exclusively to infant baptism in the Roman Catholic church, but since the infant baptism and infant naming would often coincide, slowly people start to conflate the two and use "christening" as a synonym for "naming".

So, you have a term called "rechristening", which just means "renaming". This is ironic, because the root word is "christening", and by that interpretation, you produce a misleading connotation - that a person can be rebaptized.

Once in a while, I fantasize about going through life and celebrating milestone events like baptism at infancy, first holy communion at age seven, confirmation at age fourteen, marriage in adulthood, and funeral after life.

hmmm i have none of those 'milestones'

@Scrooge me neither

though I teach at religious schools

@Scrooge Which tradition?

a mixed bag - I go where the work is

I teach science and maths mainly, and literacy where I can

as a cultural experience, it has been amazing and enriching

Your profile says that you used to be religious, but then the judgmental hypocrisy of many people "associated with religion" drove you away from religion. I hope the judgmental hypocrisy does not come from Christians, because judgmental hypocrisy was one of the things Jesus criticized.

unfortunately yes, a lot of it came from Christians

but there have been many who have been accepting of the way I think etc

but it has been tipped towards the nastier side recently

Well, being Christian, Jewish, atheist, agnostic, whatever doesn't make you perfect. It's just a characteristic.

oh yes, that is true - the hypocrisy and judgements came from organisations, institutions as well as people

and I am the opposite end to perfect (in fact, one could say that I am downright horrendous ...and weird)

@Scrooge That's ok. I'm sure @waxeagle @caleb and @Dan would all agree with you on Christian grounds. :)

ironically, I have faith in people in general

On second thought, I'm not so sure what @Dan would say; he's Orthodox.

that humans, as a whole, are capable of great things

@Scrooge The phrase "to have faith in" mean mean "to believe in", but it may also mean "to trust someone or something" or "to confide in someone or something".

well, I am not sure about my wording - I guess I could say that I believe that humans,in general, are capable of great things

I am also as dumb as a box of rocks

well, thank you for the chat - have a great day/evening/night

It seems that Christianity is launched by a perceived miracle.

A perceived and real miracle.

So... If I create a chat room, and the moderators think it's an inappropriate topic, can they delete it? I'm seriously considering a "Shut up David Stratton" room so that people can jump on me there rather than in comments on the main site. I seem to be drawing a bit of ire these days.

@DavidStratton Hahaha.

@DavidStratton Are you doing that because you keep welcoming newcomers to the Stacks Exchange and you think that people are tired of your repeating the same message again and again tirelessly?

That, and I am usually in the first to vote to close, and I am getting a LOT of flack over the whole idea that "opinion" questions are off-topic and I'm just relentless on that point.

I think perhaps I am too militant in my approach and should lighten up.

@DavidStratton Aha! Now that sounds like a Fundamentalist!

So what are you up to tonight, @Anonymous? Just hanging out?

@Anonymous I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to reply to here....

@DavidStratton nahh, keep it up

you'll have at least one backup VTC from me ;)

@DavidStratton I usually agree with your vtc reasons and follow suit. We would need to open an opposing room "Keep it up David Stratton" to even things out. Then every time before you do anything on the site you check the rooms.

@Scrooge Only when they put aside childish, selfish ways, gain a little foresight, and work together. Before that, it is just a competition to see who can be the biggest jerk.

@DavidStratton @David it would be a quiet room. Most o of us agree with your actions and those who don't would almost certainly do so inline rather than fond a proper venue to discuss (chat) or object (meta).

You're taking fire because you're first to comment/act on our guidelines a lot of the time (and frankly I love you for it) but we've had a huge influx of people who either don't understand our don't agree with our general principals.

The site will implode I'd we let them all have their way, but it is tedious to educate everybody that congress along.

I agree with everything you were trying to explain @DavidStratton, my only suggestion would be along the lines of my comment. It's great to use comments as a way to introduce new folks to the site and point them in the right direction. However as soon as a third voice steps in with an objection to The Way Things Are™ is all goes to pieces.

If they want to argue the guidelines were misapplied in a specific case and that a question should be reconsidered I may let it go but the second the argument becomes about how the guidelines are wrong in the first place I would suggest clamming up and not trying to convince them in comments. Only do that if they show up in chat or on meta.

I'm also willing to enforce the switch to meta for that sort of dissent by not giving anybody the chance to make comments on main a political platform. Feel free to flag any comments that cross that line.

@fredsbend Re your flag: you are right those posts were from the same user. They were actually both sock puppet accounts part of a larger voting ring we busted earlier this week. The perpetrator has been warned and it seems he's gone back and self deleted a lot of the content from the socks.

Moral of the story: don't cheat folks, it won't pay in the end.

Also don't be skittish about downvoting well upvoted content. Just because something has 5 upvotes and you don't see anything useful about it doesn't mean you should second guess yourself and give it a free pass. Don't let crowd mentality dictate your votes, in this case it only made the bad guys harder to catch and sort out. In the end it was one courageous downvoter on a couple upvoted garbage posts that made the sock master do something that caught our attention.

@Caleb Thank you. That's good advice. It's not really constructive for me to argue in comments, either. (sigh) I will try to refrain. Knowing hen to clam up isn't my strong suit! :;)

@DavidStratton It's easy enough for me to see coming in later to see that something has switched from education to debate but much harder when you are the one in the middle of it. I wouldn't sweat it really you're doing a great (and valuable!) job. If you see something that you think has gone too far flag it and we'll clean up. It's going to keep happening but the cleanup helps too keep it from being a bad example and from letting the inevitable neigh sayers from being disruptive.

@DavidStratton And when they start yelling about censorship and might-makes-right tactics A) the heat will be on mods instead of you and B) we can just keep saying they can make their case uncensored on meta all they want and if they get traction then we can adjust policy but until then main gets run per The Establishment.

@Caleb How do you know it's a sock puppet? Can mods check IP addresses?

@Anonymous Mods have tools for that, the details of which are secret sauce.

@Caleb So... why don't you release them?

You could review the main meta for bits of whats publicly known bot we don't want puppet masters and other subversives knowing what triggers review or what we can research. Part of the game of cat and mouse to keep spammers and trolls at bay.

@Caleb How do you know it's the same person?

@Caleb This may be a silly question, but what constitutes "trolling" or "spamming"?

@Anonymous Go hang out on the main meta to learn about that sort of community norms on the network (although they are pretty standard internet wide social concepts).

@Caleb Tell me more about yourself. What brought you to Turkey? How fluently do you speak Turkish? What is it like living in Turkey?

@Caleb What do you do for a living? Do you live alone or with family members or roommates?

@Caleb How did you find out about the Stacks Exchange Network?

@Caleb What is your favorite Turkish dish?

@Caleb How often do you hear traditional Turkish music?

@Caleb What's so special about Turkey?

@Anonymous to be fair often we don't. a single person and coworkers are largely indistinguishable. We used to merge socks into one account, we don't do that any more for this very reason.

FYI @PeterTurner christianity.stackexchange.com/a/23791/1304

> Mawwage, that dweam wifin a dweam.

@Caleb Cool. Happy to help officer. That sound like the fun part of moderating. Why would anybody do this? The rep is worth nothing. I guess people get board and some have tendencies for kleptomania, which I see this kind of like that.

@Dan The troparion you quote ("Your nativity, O virgin...") is also known in the Western liturgy. There is a setting by Palestrina. Latin is: Nativitas tua, Dei Genitrix Virgo, gaudium annuntiavit universo mundo: ex te enim ortus est Sol iustitiae, Christus Deus noster, qui solvens maledictionem dedit benedictionem, et confundens mortem donavit nobis vitam sempiternam.

Here is a beautiful 14th C. version with an illuminated initial showing the birth of Mary, and a bonus hare-and-hound along the bottom.

@TRiG love that film!

@JamesT The original book is also excellent, though in a rather different way. (And the whole mawwage bit is actually in the book, too.)

@JamesT thanks!

I'm actually Eastern Orthodox, so I wasn't sure if it was retained in the West

@JamesT I changed it to 'Catholic Christians...' and took out all the qualifiers about Eastern

I also consider myself to be a Catholic Christian (as does the Pope)

@TRiG oh now I will have to read the book as well!

@JamesT Heh.

@fredsbend I sort of understand the motivation on SO (possible professional advancement/prestige), but I don't get it here. Some people like to know others agree with them

@Dan I don't know what its status is in the liturgy as of 2013, but I would be completely unsurprised to find it in current use; in any case, it is historically there.

Ah, Mary. Mary. Madonna. Maria. Theotokos.

How do we know that Mary is really the mother of Jesus?

@Anonymous Muire; Máire.

@TRiG Eh?

Irish has two forms of the name, one in general use, and one applied only to the mother of Jesus.

Then, which one is applied to the Jesus's mommy?

@Anonymous Muire.

Searching "Madonna" on Google gives Madonna the entertainer, not the mother of Jesus.

Who is Jesus's father?

The adoptive father is Joseph.

@Anonymous I don't know. It wasn't me.

@TRiG In Spanish-speaking countries, Jesus is a male given name. It would be hilarious, if a woman wants to find the father of her child, who happens to be named Jesus, and that woman's name is Maria. Hahaha.

@Anonymous Ha. Ha ha. Ha.

I'm sure it's happened. Probably many times.

I wonder how God - an immaterial deity - can produce a son on Earth.

I think Jesus is one strange person.

What frightens me is that the virgin birth is a real historical event.

@Anonymous I truly never know what you're going to say next.

@TRiG Why?

@Anonymous Well, we could map it out, but then you might have another mind spill of questions and thoughts ;) That's okay though. You make me laugh sometimes.

In other news ... I have only ten more review tasks before I get the Reviewer badge. Whoopie!

@fredsbend Map it out.