When I first saw the invitation, I was not quite sure what I was looking at. "Please come to Harry's bash!" it proclaimed. It featured a colourful cartoon of four pigs sitting on bar stools, in various stages of inebriation.
One had slid onto the floor, and the other three looked ready to follow. Was it an invitation to a party for someone leaving work? It took me a moment to figure out that Harry is eight, and making his first communion, and that this was an invitation to friends and neighbours to celebrate.
Without doubt, it was quite the most unusual invitation to commemorate a sacrament I had ever seen. When I mentioned it to friends, though, some of them asked me had I seen congratulations cards for confirmation? You can still buy nice religious cards featuring doves, but you have to search a bit. Instead, some cards for girls feature belly-topped lassies off to spend their dosh in the mall. Some for boys featured comments about the easiest money they would ever earn.
Complaining about attitudes to sacraments is a hardy perennial. As communion and confirmation time roll around, so do the predictable articles and TV and radio items about eight-year-olds taking sunbed sessions, having operations to pin ears back, or hair extensions and false nails done. Not to mention expenditures of €1,000 or more on dress, parasol, bag, shoes, and about the same on a meal and drinks for family and friends.
Can I admit to a teensy, weensy twinge of guilt? My own daughter is making her First Holy Communion this month, and my first thought was glee at the fun of dressing her up. Not joy that she was receiving such an important sacrament, or worries about whether she would understand its significance, but delight at the girly moments ahead, choosing a dress and head-dress. For those who know us both, and who know that neither she nor I are particularly girly, it will probably come as a shock.
But when I thought about it, I understood why. I would no more dream of putting her on a sunbed than I would, well, voluntarily expose her to the risk of cancer. Her dress is a bargain, bought in a sale. Her shoes are simple and inexpensive, and we borrowed a bag. In fact, we would happily have borrowed the whole outfit, but she is tall and willowy and not so easy to fit. The joyful prospect of dressing her up was all about bonding, and sharing a special moment together.
In no sense do I wish to condone any of the nonsense which surrounds First Holy Communion, with little miniature brides teetering around under a ton of lace, or tiaras which flash the word "Jesus", triggered by remote control when the child receives Communion. However, I think it is easy to sneer at the excesses. Most of them are rooted in a desire to celebrate the child.
This is particularly true in working-class areas. It is easy for those of us with ample money to decry the poor "wasting" money on vulgar outfits, or going into debt. Some of the criticism, though, strikes me as being on a par with those who criticise those on social welfare who smoke, as if minor vices are only for the privileged who can afford them.
In a very interesting chapter in Collision Culture by Kieran Keohane and Carmen Kuhling, the authors analyse the extraordinary level of consumerist spending at Christmas, and locate it in what they term "reciprocal gift relations". Far from being an expression of selfish individualism, gift giving at Christmas is firmly rooted in a celebration of family and friends. Keohane and Kuhling conclude that "the traditional values of community remain central extravagant expenditure is spent on shoring up values and social solidarities perceived as being 'endangered'".
However, they recognise that the phenomenon is not entirely benign. They point to the "competitive and self-destructive tendencies" inherent in the extravagance which surrounds such events as weddings, First Communion, and Confirmation. When you see people going into debt to money-lenders in working-class areas, or savagely outdoing the Jones in middle-class areas, the destructive tendencies are obvious.
Yet Keohane and Kuhling are on to something. Parents love their children. They want them to be happy and to give them the best that they can afford. In the case of poorer people, they put even more of an effort into special occasions, so that the child and the family do not feel that everything is a relentless grind. For some people, this desire to give the best to the child co-exists with a desire to link them into something special and lasting, that is, an understanding of, and a participation in, a church.
However, for increasing numbers of people, the spiritual aspect has been hollowed out and all that remains is a kind of expensive rite of passage. It may reflect deep human values such as love for and pride in our children, but it goes no further. The more an event such as First Holy Communion becomes cut off from its spiritual roots, the more resistant parents are to modifying the excesses that surround it.
Yet the church, rather than condemning what parents are doing, may have to shoulder some of the responsibility. If a fake tan or a €600 dress represents the best that parents feel they have to offer their children, does that represent a failure on the part of the church to communicate to people that spiritual values are a major support to children as they grow?
Does it represent a massive failure on the part of so-called Catholic schools to nourish an appreciation of the spiritual? Or has the nature of everyday life today choked off any opportunity for reflection? Personally, I would hate to see churches take a purist approach to the celebration of sacraments, for example, by excluding those children who are not from active and believing families.
It is a much more interesting question to consider how to reach people who are not concerned about religion and feel no lack as a result. How might the church suggest to them that the sacraments could be a source of sustenance and connection much more lasting than a "bash"?