The GEDCOM Standard supports both Baptism and Christening and so does Family Historian, additionally it also may show both the Baptism and Christening fields on the detail tab of the Property Box Dialogue, and this can lead to some confusion as to which to use.<\/p>\n
In many cases a Christening is done soon after birth, but baptism can be done at any time, if not done during a Christening.<\/p>\n
How “official” this view is remains subject to challenge. The major Christian denominations hold theologically that admission to the Christian Church takes place through Baptism. The difference is semantic. Etymology shows that to become a Christian is to be “Christ’ened”. It is admitted that separate events can be found for the same individual, and this defies mainstream theological explanation. It is better, therefore, to record either as an event according to what is recorded at source.<\/p>\n
For simplicity sake it\u2019s generally easier to use one or the other in your family history file, many people decide to use baptism, however you will find people using christening and it\u2019s up to you as to whether, when you receive a file from somebody else you change.<\/p>\n
Since FH<\/abbr> V5 the easiest way to change a file you have received to baptism is to use the Change Any Fact Tag<\/a> plugin.<\/p>\n Prior to FH<\/abbr> V5 the only quick way to change a file you have received to baptism was to use a text editor to replace 1 CHR with 1 BAPM. It is important if you decide to do this, to use the search and replace utility, which will match on case and ideally be able to find them only at the front of a line. A text editor such as PSPad<\/a> or TextPad<\/a> is suitable.<\/p>\n