It starts with a message to the second-class Educate Together WhatsApp – or two messages, really. The first concerns a side chat for the pupils in my son’s class who will be making their First Holy Communion. I get the little dopamine hit of child-related admin I can safely ignore, but it’s swiftly followed by a poll for a secular milestone event for all those who will not be making their Communions. There’s not much information at this point, but it’s called an “Eachtra” and is described as a party with mystical overtones – to take place in the school hall. None of this is the school’s doing I should stress – it’s an all-out wonderful place. This is about parents (myself included) and our appetite for ceremony. I read the exchange with growing alarm as names congregate next to the “Yes” option. Alarm, and something like annoyance. I thought that one of the unspoken benefits of a secular education was that we avoided having to fork out for a bouncy castle in second class?
I google the Irish word “eachtra” on my way into work and learn that it means “adventure”, specifically of the kind in Irish folklore where a hero enters the underworld. There they do battle with otherworldly beings and return, armed with new wisdom and fortitude. I imagine us parachuting our cosseted eight-year-olds – Battle Royale style – on to a remote island off the coast of Connemara with some dubious weapons and survival tools. “This island looks just like Season Four of Fortnite ...” one screen-obsessed child might whisper on impact, awed by the bleak splendour of the Atlantic coastline (okay – my screen-obsessed child).
[ €600 Communion money: Is it just a bribe to get people to keep the faith?Opens in new window ]
Communion is the second of the seven Catholic sacraments, in place since the Middle Ages as a child’s first formal participation in the Eucharist. And the First Holy Communion is slated for age seven or eight because this – in Catholic teaching at least – is the age of moral reason, when children can tell right from wrong and confess to the latter. Alongside the First Confession, the run up also involves lessons on the Eucharist (when I was seven we even toured the kitchens where they made the wafers). Children also learn about belonging to the community of the Church, becoming “one body, one spirit in Christ”. With 88 per cent of primary schools having a Catholic ethos and fewer than 70 per cent of the population (across all age groups) identifying as Catholic, the number of Communions taking place presumably far exceeds the number of actual Catholic seven- and eight-year-olds.
The secular alternative takes some of the basic principles of moral awakening and social belonging and transposes them into the tastes of your typically middle-class Educate Together demographic. (“I’ve heard it called ‘Segregate Together’,” a mother hissed to me in the playground when my son was still a toddler, before going on to tell me that a seven-year-old from the nearby Catholic school had just given her a twig he said looked “like the cross that the baby Jesus died on for our sins”).
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A WhatsApp message about the secular ‘non-Communion’ makes my heart sink
These rituals nod in the general direction of goodwill and community building, a sort of civics-light that leaves the existing order undisturbed. The children work together to build a tree fort, or they bake cakes to raise funds (as one article reports) for “a water filtration system for a family in Africa”. If nothing else, I think, these rites prepare middle-class children for the enforced team-building weekends and corporate social responsibility that lie in many of their futures.
[ Children don’t need bouncy castles so much as to feel part of something biggerOpens in new window ]
As with many humanist ceremonies, Christian God and religion gets swapped out for the pseudo-mystical. “We incorporated a ‘pouring of sand’ activity,” a parent wrote in The Journal in 2019, “which saw the children choose different coloured sands which they poured in layers into a large decorative glass vase.”
I try to imagine what sort of coming-of-age rituals we might bestow on our little ones this May. A “Taste of the Bitter Truth”, maybe, where each child sips tonic water – “a symbol of the harsh realities of adult life”. Or how about an offertory procession called “The Unending March of Responsibilities”? “Saoirse brings a laundry basket, symbolising the invisible work that is never done. Fiachra bears Lycra cycling shorts, to remind us of the thrilling possibility of midlife hobbies ...”
But what exactly is the point of the non-Communion? Parents on Reddit forums such as Ask Ireland cite concerns that their LOs (Little Ones) might “feel left out” of the buzz – the tiny wedding gown, the gaming van, the cash windfall. “[S]he wants the dress and the party but not the actual Masses and teachings,” one mother writes.
“Sounds like she’s all set to be an a la carte Catholic,” someone else replies. “Just throw an end-of-year party and give her €1,000 cash out of your own pocket.”
This “feeling left out” is mentioned again and again, despite the fact that most children in Educate Together schools probably aren’t practising Catholics. They receive no religious instruction. The ones who don’t make their Communion, then, probably won’t feel excluded from a ritual that’s been parked at the school gates. Do their parents? “I think there’s an element who pine for the lost pomp of Communion ceremonies,” my friend with a child in an older class replies to my “Why the Eachtra?” voice note.
As for my child, he lets out a dismissive noise when asked if he’d like to do a coming-of-age ceremony with his friends from school, suggesting he is capable not only of moral reasoning, but profound ennui. “But most of his classmates have signed up now,” my husband points out, half ironically, half serious: “What if he feels left out?”
