Cumetria (the christening feast)

Cumetria is the party that follows a child's baptism, a custom of considerable antiquity in the Moldovan village, through which the family honours its godparents and strengthens its ties with the community. The name comes from "cumătru" and "cumătră", the terms by which the child's parents and the godparents address one another after the baptism, establishing between them a spiritual kinship observed with great care. To be a cumătru meant, in the world of the village, a bond for life, almost as strong as one of blood.

Origin and meaning

Although the party as such has no canonical basis, it continues a very old custom: after the baptismal service, the community would gather at a shared meal, initially in the nature of a Christian agape, in the churchyard or nearby. At first, these meals were without dancing, without drink and without money placed on the table — everything came down to the spiritual joy of receiving a new Christian. In time, the cumetrie moved into the parents' house and turned into a feast in its own right, an occasion of joy for the whole extended family.

How it unfolds

Unlike the baptism, which anyone who wished could attend, to the cumetrie were usually invited only married people, close relatives and family friends. Guests often came with gifts in the form of food — cheese, eggs, wheat or flour — and on the table there was no lack of sarmale, zeamă, plăcinte and meat, accompanied by house wine. The party meant wishes of health and good fortune for the infant, the offering of gifts to the godparents, song, dancing and good cheer until late into the night. Through this ritual the godparents became the child's spiritual protectors.

Today

In the villages and towns of Moldova the cumetrie remains an important event of family life, although it has modernised: increasingly it is held in venues, with dozens or hundreds of guests, live music and gifts of money for the little ones. Voices from within the Church sometimes warn against exaggerated pomp and against competition in spending, recalling that the purpose of the celebration is the joy of receiving the child into the community, not the display of wealth. Beyond outward forms, the cumetrie preserves a core of solidarity and of spiritual kinship that has held the Moldovan village together across the generations, strengthening that network of relationships in which every family had cumetri and godchildren, bonds that extended also to children and grandchildren, passed on further as a true inheritance of kin.