Un-godly god parents...

[DaisyD]

Without wishing to cause offence to anyone, is there an atheist equivalent? I like the idea of asking close friends to take on a 'god-parent' role when my baby arrives, but none of my friends (or myself) are religious.

[Lily_b]

How about a naming ceremony. I don't know the ins & outs, but you do a search on the internet and see what turns up.

[grumpii]

Kill a goat or something.

[jake-the-peg]

My sister has two twins one of whom is severely disabled.

They asked us and a number of other people to be "pebble parents" to them. The idea was that it was too much responsibility to ask any one family to take on their care should my sister and her partner be unable to.

I think it went along the lines of "as a large rock may be supported by many small pebbles".

Anyway we wen to a ceremony at a kind of new age place where they burnt some incense and we all placed a pebble in a bowl.

Bit over my "Hippy threshold" really but there are more conventional naming ceremonies available for example here:
http://www.essexcc.gov.uk/vip8/ecc/ECCWebsite/ dis/guc.jsp?channelOid=13921&guideOid=14073&gu ideContentOid=20162

[yolande]

My sister has 'fairy god-parents' which I think is quite cute.

[Wagon_Wheel]

Me and my other half are "odd parents" to my best friend's little girl. We are two of many that she has and have all agreed to helps support her throughout her life with the respective skills that we have. We had a little ceremony using our own words and it was lovely and totally secular.

[DaisyD]

thanks all, given me some ideas!
Daiz x

[Plocket]

We had a naming party for our daughter and invited two people to be "fairy god parents" - they each did a little toast at the party.