In Defense of Baby Showers
Most weeks the last thing we think we need is to add another event to the calendar, especially an event that requires a gift and possibly our help in supplying the refreshments.
Yet when the bulletin announcement appears or the email invitation arrives for a baby shower, immediately adding it to our calendar is the right response.
If the shower were for our sister, our niece, or our own daughter, we’d certainly block off the time, no questions asked. But why?
Baby showers are a way a culture bestows value and honor to mothers and infants, unborn children, and growing families.
Baby Showers Aren’t a Waste of Time
It’s not just a chance to eat together, although that too is valuable for a community.
It’s not just a church function everyone feels obligated to perpetuate. That’s a bad attitude talking.
It’s not just a time to give supplies and gifts to a needy couple, although that too is valuable for a community. If the gifts were the point, then if the family did not need anything, there’d be no reason to put on a shower.
If the gifts were the point, then it is not your presence as part of the community that matters, but that you purchased something they needed.
In Leisure: the Basis of Culture, Joseph Pieper writes, “the highest form of affirmation is the festival.” He continues, “To hold a celebration means to affirm the basic meaningfulness of the universe.” When we celebrate something, when we gather convivially, festively, to honor a person and an occasion, we are declaring with our hearts and time – with ourselves – that we are part of something larger than ourselves.
Baby Showers Celebrate Life
To hold a celebration of a new baby is to affirm that life is more than utilitarian productivity. Who we are is bigger than what we accomplish. We are part of a larger body and that body is expanding due to no effort of our own. New life is a gift our community gratefully receives as a blessing on everyone, because life is about more than our own personal bottom line or resume.
Each baby shower is an occasion for women outside a childbearing season themselves to remember to honor the life-giving purpose of women. Not all women do give life via childbirth, yet all women are for life – creating, nurturing, and developing life.
Babies are the archetype of life, and thus we should all, regardless of life stage or particular calling, gather to celebrate a sister (including the sisters of our church) giving herself for life, whether its her first time or tenth time.
Churches Should Host Baby Showers
Baby showers are a way for all women to partake in the joy that is a new baby, if only we can set aside our own personal self-centeredness long enough to realize that in a community, in a church body, we are all bound to one another and one’s blessing actually blesses everyone, if we have eyes and heart to see and receive it.
Thus, baby showers shouldn’t just be thrown by friends and family as a small, intimate party. Instead, it is good, right, and proper for churches to host baby showers. It is a celebration of the whole community, for the whole community.
Only five children are my own particular children. Currently only 18 children are my actual nieces and nephews. Only one baby so far is my granddaughter. Yet joined to a church body by baptismal vows, I am analogous to a sister, an aunt, a grandmother to many, many more.
How families work teach us how the church works, how we are to relate to one another. Just as the angels in heaven rejoice when a repentant sinner is added to the kingdom, so we ought to rejoice when a new covenant child is added.
Baby Showers and Feminine Glory
Baby showers, celebrations of new life, keep us in touch with our purpose as women: to build homes. Some may be doing it more literally and others more metaphorically, but we can all rejoice together in growing households, in increased love, in multiplied humanity.
This rejoicing is what we were made for and what our fathers, brothers, and husbands are called to protect, defend, and provide for. They form an outer wall, a skin for the body, and on the inside, pulsating life, we throw parties.
Parties are not mere fun, a pause for entertainment. Not at all. Celebrations are required for culture, and what a culture celebrates signals its priorities and desires. Let our church cultures be known for loving life and multiplied congregations. Let us throw baby showers for every baby.
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This post hit the spot! I attended a baby shower today. I was part of a team that planned it. It was a small gathering, but all age groups were represented from young girls to great-grandmas. It was attended by a sweet, joyful, woman who hasn’t had children as well. It was such a special time, to visit, to laugh. I think women open up more when it’s just women. It was a special day.
When I started having multiple children, I thought they each deserved a shower…not because I need more baby things, but because each life is worth celebrating.
Thanks for the great explanation of why these things matter and why we as women need to take part.
Wonderful! I have been part of several communities that have done this well and have believed it for a long time, but I love these quotes to back up the idea. “The highest form of affirmation is the festival!” I was at a wedding shower this past week, and it seems all the same ideas apply. Maybe it is easier to justify festival because they only happen once typically whereas babies can be many. But it was wonderful that the bride invited all the little girls of the church and that were close to her and she allowed them to help with the gifts and read their cards aloud. It was a lovely time with all the women of the community from the oldest to the youngest.