Create your own ceremony.

That's what more young professionals around the country are doing. Raised in traditional faiths, they've drifted - or run rapidly - away from their churches and synagogues. But they love the rituals of birth and death, marriage or entry into adulthood. Such couples must craft their own ceremonies, drawing on aspects of the centuries-old traditions but adding a secular, modern twist.

"It's a moment where you as a parent are expressing your highest hopes for your child and you are taking on the most profound responsibilities of your life," says Greg Epstein, humanist chaplain at Harvard University. "At that awesome moment, people do not want to be dishonest. They do not want to give lip service to a religion and a god that they don't honestly believe in."

In recent months, Epstein has been asked to officiate at dozens of such events.

"You don't need God to tell you how to do these things," he says, "but you do need somebody who has training and expertise and has thought about the best way to do it and can guide you through the process. That's the role I play."

As a master of ceremonies, Epstein works to balance dignity and fun.

"I try to make sure that the parents get to shine and the family, friends and broader community can take part in the joy," he says. "It should be a happy day."

Web sites help parents prepare for such ceremonies, offering sample readings, suggested gifts and possible guest lists. Since 1994, Great Britain has had a Baby Naming Society to help with these occasions and a British Web site, www.confettibaby.co.uk, even spells out every detail from the focus (naming or welcoming?), setting (peaceful, beautiful, good associations), posture of attendees (facing the baby or encircling her?), music and possible "godparents."

Want a Hindu thought or a Kahlil Gibran quote? How about an anonymous poem about the spirit of the child? Google has it all.

That's too much planning for some parents who just want a down-home, do-it-yourself occasion.

"We had a wedding without mention of anything religious, in which we made public declarations about our love. Why not a christening?" asks Salt Lake mother, Cindy Stark, who, with her husband, Tom Gabardi, had a secular baby-naming ceremony for their two sons. Both parents were raised Catholic.

Deciding what to say about their parental aspirations can be both intimidating and liberating, they say.

"You have to be reflective," Gabardi says. "We spent a lot of time thinking about it. We wrote down our ideas and went over and over them."

Undaunted by the task, Gabardi, an Ogden native who works as a consulting engineer, and Stark, a University of Utah philosophy professor who is originally from Harrisburg, Pa., gathered dozens of colleagues, neighbors, friends and relatives around them in their Avenues home and held the ritual for their second son, 9-month-old, Griffin Michael Stark.

They wished for him "a long, healthy life, full of loyal friends, inspiration, optimism, adventure and a president with an IQ higher than 80 [a little joke]," Stark says.

They gave him the gifts of "gratitude, a loving and supportive community, an abiding sense of your own worth, boundless curiosity, zest for life, compassion for those less privileged, a sense of justice and an aversion to tongue piercings."

Gabardi didn't agree to the prohibition on piercings, he says now. "I don't have a problem with it."

They gave Griffin a Chinese medallion with an inscription about his birth in "the year of the dog."

Gabardi and Stark hosted the same ceremony for their oldest, 3-year-old Gabriel Anthony Gabardi, on a cold December day. Then-7-month-old Gabriel perched on a toddler chair near the fireplace while his parents toasted him and bestowed on him the same wishes and gifts.

Gabriel's Chinese medallion was for the "year of the monkey."

At the climactic moment, Gabardi and Stark declared, "Welcome to the world, Gabriel Anthony Gabardi," and the assembled crowd burst into applause. It startled the little guy and he burst into tears.

Neither son has much memory of the celebrations, they say, "but it will be fun in the future to recount it for them."

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* PEGGY FLETCHER STACK can be contacted at pstack@sltrib.com or 801-257-8725. Send comments about this story to religioneditor@sltrib.com.