Being Catholic and having a Conformation Name
@cookiecrumbles (629)
United States
June 29, 2009 5:39am CST
When you are growing up you have to struggle daily often with the hard name your parents gave you. Now why did I say hard? If you were growing up during before 1960 your parents generally had your name picked out for you. They pretty much had little choice. It was either a hand me down name and had to follow what was passed down from one generation to another and they had little choice. It was your faters name or mother grand parents name, or somebody's name in the family. Or your name was a promise that somebody made when good deed was done or other heroic act was done. But there you had it. And generally it was a religious name and was Hebrew or Christian or came from the Bible. Then you had names that you were given to you at the time when you became a man or a woman in the Jewish religion at a bar mitzvah. But then you are given a name also in the Catholic religion when you are confirmed at the age of 12. At least that is when I was confirmed. I loved going threw my conformation. This was the only time I got to pick my name. I don't know if any of the rest of you were allowed to pick your name but I am glad I was. I saw a movie when I was 7 years old about Our Lady of Lourdes - St Bernadette Soubirous. Please tell me you do know who I am talking about. The movie had me in tears about this young little girl. It told of a little girl that kept having visions of the Virgin Mary and nobody would believe her. She was born in France. And her parents were the poorest of the poor. The village had been having a draught. Bernadette had told her father that the Virgin Mary told her that she was going to bring water to the cave where she played every day. And told him the exact day the water would appear. The water never showed up. Her eye sight was very bad and her father stopped her from going to the caves. But she disobeyed him and kept going down there any way and digging up the ground. One day she went there and took the mud and placed it on her eyes. When she removed it she could see. the towns people were amazed. She had more visions from the Virgin Mary. And she gave predictions to the towns people from the Virgin Mary. This movie touched me in ways I still don't understand. I just know that it made me love the movie and what happened to the little girl called Bernadette. So when it came time to pick a name for conformation I had no hesitation that was the name I wanted. I asked my mom if she could please fill out the papers. She asked me what name I wanted. I told her Bernadette. Do you know what she said? She said she didn't know to spell Bernadette, and how would Celia be like my Great Grandmother? And that is what I got! To today, I feel jipped. I loved my Great Grandma, but I really wanted St. Bernadette. What is your Conformation or Bas Mitzvah name?
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1 response
@thea09 (18305)
• Greece
29 Jun 09
I think I must have been about 11 or 12 when we took a driving holiday around France and stayed a few nights at Lourdes, it was very memorable with the long walk to the big chapel full of pilgrims, and also a bit tacky in that you could buy a plastic bottle shaped like the image of Bernadette to fill with the holy water. Haven't had a change of name by the way.
@cookiecrumbles (629)
• United States
30 Jun 09
That sounds awful. I mean why couldn't they just put it in a pretty crystal bottle and maybe charge a little more? You would have paid a bit more right? And you never had a name added to your name after you got older? What happened?
@thea09 (18305)
• Greece
30 Jun 09
We keep the name we are given at birth in the UK where I was raised. Here in Greece if you are baptised into the Greek orthodox church after already having a birth name then you are given a new name but can choose it yourself. An adult friend was baptised here and his middle name was 'Greekified', so his middle name in English was translated into the Greek equivalent. Lots of English names don't translate.
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