Of happiness and clapping

Today was the christening of my sister Fifi's Smallest Minx, and it was lovely.

Around the time that this photo of me was taken, my parents had me christened. I still have no idea why. My stepfather wasn't a churchgoer (what with the violent alcohol-fuelled bullying taking up most of his spare time), and my mother, as far as I can tell, doesn't care about anything very much so I can't see Jesus being high on her agenda. Despite this, my stepsister and I went to Sunday school, and in order to facilitate this, I had the old cross-on-the-forehead routine at the age of about three.

I think it had more to do with my parents' social ambitions than any desire to lead the pair of us in the way of the Lord. For a period of about ten months, my stepsister and I spent Sunday mornings in the church hall, colouring in pamphlets about Jesus and singing songs about letting our little burning lights shine. All that good stuff. Once the weekend cocktail party routine with the neighbours was established, we stopped going, although I remember attending church on a couple of endless, fidgety occasions, and once burning my fingers fairly badly on the heater under the pew. That was pretty much the extent of the church's influence on me - I learned that if you touch a heater, it hurts quite a lot. The whole religious aspect of it pretty much passed me by. The concept of a friendly, avuncular man in the sky (a bit like Terry Wogan, but with a beard) was a bit odd in itself (weren't people who talked to people that nobody else could see a bit, well, mad, like the patients on a pass from the local mental hospital that we used to see in the town on Saturday trips to the off-licence), but throw in giant crosses, men kissing other men and all that talk of love, and it was all a bit overwhelming.

And my view, I discovered this morning, is pretty much unchanged. I just don't understand why anyone would believe all that stuff. I know, I know - that's why they call it faith. It just doesn't work for me. It's a nice enough concept, I suppose - if you're a good person and help others and pray and stuff then you get to go to heaven when you finally pop your clogs, and sit on clouds with your dead granny, and eat crumpets and ambrosia rice pudding and lovely things like that. It just seems a bit...tenuous. I mean, nobody can prove to me categorically that investing an hour of my Sunday in singing songs to an invisible person is going to pay off. I'm just not convinced the odds are good enough, plus I have enough guilt without worrying about sin on top of everything else.

In a weird way, though, I'm slightly envious of people who have a religion. It must be comforting to think that, at the end of everything, it's all sort of taken care of. Or if you're having a bad day, you can have a little word in private and then look forward to it all getting a bit better soon. It just doesn't work for me.

Besides, all that drinking from a cup that loads of other people have drunk from doesn't seem that hygienic to me. I can think of better ways of contracting herpes.