Why Do People Christen Ships With Champagne?

What’s the deal with people smashing bottles of champagne on ships?

Photo by Kamil Molendys on Unsplash

Christenings can happen for many reasons, but this article is specifically about the practice of christening a ship. We all have this image in our heads, right? A boat or a ship has been built, it’s complete, it’s ready to slide into the briny blue. And right before it does, someone walks up to the ship usually with great pomp and circumstance. They take a big bottle of bubbly, usually champagne, and they smash it against the whole- everybody cheers. And then the ship goes into the water and off to adventure on the high seas.

How did it start?

It’s really interesting that the term christening is still what’s used because christening like baptism is a religious term. It’s what they do to babies when they dip them in holy water in a Catholic ceremony. I’ve heard interchangeably that baptizing is the same thing as christening.

I believe that christening is part of baptism. It’s also a naming ceremony. It’s where you give a kid a Christian name during the baptism like how the naming of a ship is also a big part of its christening.

So, it’s super old. It goes back to the Egyptians, the Greeks, and even the Romans. And it was all about calling on…