A friend of mine was recently at a bris and was telling me about how they gave wine to the baby to clam it afterwards. I have been to a couple brises and always though that the wine was symbolic not actually to dull the babies senses. we got into an argument over this. My friends argument was it had to be the wine because after they gave it to him it shut up. they filled a gauze with wine and gave it to the baby to suck on. I felt that, that sounded like one of those old wives tales something that has fuzzy logic and could potentially be true but most likely isn't. I argued that simply the act of sucking on anything would have calmed the baby for the same reason babies suck on their fingers or a pacifier as an artificial tit to calm them. While I can see the fuzzy logic behind using alcohol to calm the baby i would imagine it is entirely symbolic and the amount of wine/alcohol that would be necessary to have the effect my friend described would be very dangerous to an 8 day old baby.