Cultural differences

There's been several times in the past year that the hubby has just off-handedly mentioned to me, "Hey, we need to get Keira christened." "Ok," I would say absently and continue doing what I was doing.

A few months go by, he'd mention it again and he'd get the same response. Since we were in Germany at the time, there really wasn't any hurry to get this done yet and really, we thought that it would be best to plan it when we moved back to Norway.

So, we come back and Per mentions it again..."hey, we need to get Keira christened."

I couldn't for the life of me understand what the big deal was. I thought that we would just get to it when we got to it. It's not like we were lacking in things to do, especially with the move back to Norway, starting to work again and so on.

I finally booked a date for the christening a few weeks ago and as it turns out, it's the day after what I thought would be Keira's big 2 year old birthday party. In my mind, the big event was Keira's birthday party and not the christening, so it would be ok to have them back to back. I've been in birthday party planning mode...going back and forth about the invitation list, activities, what to serve, etc. blissfully unaware that the christening was a big deal.

How did I suddenly get the shocker that I didn't have my priorities set correctly? I was mentioning to a colleague of mine that I should probably cater in for the christening because I wouldn't have time to cook and plan, with the birthday party and all. Did I have to have a cake? I asked her. She got this look on her face--like "Uh, yes. You need to have a couple of cakes. You also need to bring out the good china and the silver too. Some people wear their bunads to this. It's a big deal."

What?!?!?!?!?!?

When I heard the words..silver, good china, and bunad,then it hit me that maybe it's not the regular casual event.

It's not THAT big of a deal in the U.S. Normally, we just get family together, we go to the church, and then we have a meal together afterwards..no stress...no silver...no cakes...not super dressed up.

Puh. So I had to re-arrange my priorities last night and have decided that I am not super woman and cannot manage two big parties back to back, especially with family staying the whole weekend. I'll downsize the bday party to family and I'll expand the christening list to include close friends and family, focusing a lot more effort on the latter.

Geez. Who knew?