Summary

The Turkish Teething Ceremony is a cultural celebration marking a baby's first tooth, combining fun, food, and fortune-telling for the child's future profession.

Abstract

The Turkish Teething Ceremony is a joyful and unique cultural event that celebrates the milestone of a baby's first tooth. It involves a festive gathering with traditional Turkish food, a themed cake, and a playful ritual where the baby is presented with various objects symbolizing potential future careers. The baby's selection of an object is believed to predict their future profession. This ceremony, which may have Armenian origins, is not widely known even within Turkey, and it provides a delightful contrast to the author's experience in the United States, where such milestones are not typically celebrated with a dedicated event. The author reflects on the ceremony's charm and the potential usefulness of such a tradition in helping to determine one's career path, something the author themselves still ponder at the age of 52.

Opinions

The author expresses mixed emotions about their daughter's teething, finding it both endearing and a bit painful due to the risk of biting during nursing.
The author was pleasantly surprised by the tooth day celebration in Turkey, having never heard of such a tradition despite living there for years.
The ceremony is seen as a fun and delicious way to celebrate a child's developmental milestone, with the added benefit of potentially indicating the child's future career.
The author shows a sense of humor and slight envy regarding the ceremony's ability to predict a baby's future profession, as they themselves have struggled with this question throughout their life.
The author suggests that the objects presented to the baby during the ceremony may be chosen to reflect the family's interests and values, implying that different families might choose different symbols.
The author laments not knowing about this tradition earlier, as it could have provided a playful way to engage with the question of what their daughter wants to be when she grows up.

Turkish Teething Ceremony: Fun, Delicious and Useful!

If only all decisions could be this easy!

Cute little tooth cake complete with toothbrush and sparklers! Photo by Author

The day my daughter’s first tooth came in, I felt excited and pained at the same time. I loved my daughter’s big toothless grin and the addition of a tooth changed her smile into something entirely different. It also put my nipples in danger in a way they hadn’t been before. From that day on, it was not unusual for our nursing sessions to be interrupted by a yelp and a reprimand. Teeth are meant for biting after all!

Being from the United States, it didn’t occur to me to mark this momentous moment with a celebration though.

Years later, in Turkey, I was invited to a tooth day celebration. My friend’s baby had just gotten his first tooth and it was time to party!

Prior to being invited to this ceremony, I had lived in Turkey for years and had never heard of it. It appears to have originated in the Armenian culture and that could explain its relative rarity.

The ceremony was fun, there was lots of delicious Turkish food like sigara borek (cigarette pastries), which are filo dough wrapped around feta cheese and fried, yum!!

There was also a really cute cake with a tooth on top and of course lots of people around celebrating the adorableness of the baby.

After an appropriate amount of time was given to eat and be merry, the ceremony began. The baby was covered with a veil, kind of like the one that covers the bride’s face in a traditional wedding, wheat was sprinkled on top of his head for good fortune, and he was put in front of various objects.

His part in the ceremony was to pick up one of the objects and that would be an indication of what he is going to be when he grows up.

Oh, how I wish I had done this when I was a baby, it would have saved me not knowing what to answer the million times I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up and I am 52!

I did some research into what objects are put in front of the baby but I could find only one reference to it that said it included such things as a hammer and a knife, symbolizing the building and medical trades respectively.

This seems to be flexible as the ceremony I attended did not include a hammer and the knife was replaced with a stethoscope (probably safer). The family did have a stethoscope handy as both parents work in the medical field.

The other objects were: a book for scholars and religious fields, a pen for writers, a harmonica for musical professions, and a paintbrush for visual arts.

I suspect the objects were chosen because the family was quite academic and interested in arts, music and medicine. I wonder what the choices would be in other families.

I think my parents would have given me a book, a dog bowl, a calculator, a tennis ball, and a star as those were more indicative of their interests.

This baby chose the harmonica and proceeded to put it in his mouth, not to play on it, bet to chew on it. He was teething after all.

So, it seems my daughter is doomed to not know what she wants to be when she grows up because I found out about this ceremony too late. She, like me, keeps changing her mind.

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