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Louise Thomas
Editor
When a mum friend told me she’d chosen 37 people to be her seven-year-old daughter’s godparents, I was taken aback. “Thirty-seven?” I asked, thinking that surely I’d misheard her. I’d struggled to whittle my children’s godparents down to six!
“It’s a cracking great idea [to have 37],” Caroline* told me, adding that she had approached the procedure much in the same way as selecting a board of trustees in her day job. “I can’t recommend it more highly. She has godparents in North America, South America, Europe, Eastern Europe, Australia, and Asia. She has godparents everywhere.”
Caroline didn’t specifically want 37 different godparents for her daughter, she says, but asked people “who would be brilliant” – and, as she explains, “that amounted to quite a number”.
“It’s just an incredibly good principle: you quadruple the number that you think you need, because immediately, 50 per cent fall away from the time of the christening – and another 50 per cent a year later.” Her long list of godparents – who are highly influential, with their own “specialisms” – can offer her daughter a “wealth of expertise”. “Of course, you always need the billionaire, the head of a FTSE100 company, a lawyer, an artist, a writer, an architect, a designer – also somebody who is just a wonderful person, but who doesn’t fit into any of those [specialist] categories.”
Now she’s left with a core group of four to six godparents, with the others being “understudies” she can call upon if needed. “You can’t predict who the core will be at the outset,” she says. “Or how good anybody will be as a godparent.”
All of this has made me rethink the whole godparent topic: should we be widening our godparent networks to epic proportions to max out on our children’s potential for enlightening conversations, lucrative internships, fabulous job offers, and places to stay all over the world? Why stick, as I did, to a handful of best friends and a few family members? Are godparents outdated, or should we be aiming to bestow them in high numbers?
Having a christening was always on my to-do list for each of my daughters. But it’s a dying tradition: in 1980, one in three babies was baptised in the Church of England. By 2011, that had dropped to just over one in 10. There were 79,600 baptisms in the UK in 2022, down from 140,000 in 2011. There’s a similar decline in the Catholic Church.
I had one godparent I never met, and then she was on TV one day and my mum said, ‘Oh, that’s your godmother. She’s a famous TV presenter’— Anonymous
Unusually, though, numbers of godparents seem to be increasing. Prince George has seven; Elizabeth Hurley’s son has six godfathers, including Elton John; and Cara Delevingne has 16 godparents, including Joan Collins. But 37? “People sniff at it, as it sounds eccentric and ridiculous,” Caroline tells me. “But for single mothers like me, it makes perfect sense to extend godparent circles to the size of three or four football teams – whatever system we’ve devised, it’s not robust. Families are unpredictable in terms of support. Until you have a child, you don’t know how it’s going to work out.”
Not everybody has endless high-profile and well-connected friends to call on – but that doesn’t stop us from looking for the best ones in bulk quantities. Too many of us have had token godparents – as another friend recently disclosed to me: “I had one I never met, and then she was on TV one day and my mum said, ‘Oh, that’s your godmother. She’s a famous TV presenter.’”
I had four godparents. Apart from my uncle, who didn’t need to do anything as he was already on the scene, they were lousy. I can’t even remember their names. One was my mum’s obstetrician – he delivered me and then vanished. Another was a Mary Quant model in the 1960s, and sent me short stories she’d written in tiny doll-sized books – but she was too zany to be of any solid guidance. I still valued her as the best, though.
According to the Church of England website, godparents are traditionally meant to answer “the bigger questions in life; questions about faith, hope and love”. But the role is now far more versatile. About 10,000 non-religious baby-naming ceremonies, costing between around £150 and £450, take place each year in the UK. These, according to Humanists UK, involve the naming of “guide-parents”, who take on the typical responsibilities of a godparent but without the religious underpinning. Deborah Hooper, director of ceremonies at Humanists UK, tells me that these particular events are more freewheeling than a traditional christening – but are fundamentally about surrounding a child in “a circle of love [in] a parents’ friend group”.
They’ve become a popular trend of late, along with gender-reveal parties and baby showers. There are even “godparent proposal” events – an over-the-top way to ask a friend to be part of your child’s life. And while christening gifts of silver spoons and silver rattles are often still the norm, planting a tree in celebration of a newborn is now quite a popular present, too.
Yet the main gift you can give your child may be a truckload of godparents. Today, these special people are far more than an accessory – they’re a lifestyle choice. And let’s be honest: it’s far more useful if they can help jump the queue at Frieze Art Fair, lend out their chateau in France, and give you a career leg-up. If they can also throw in some spiritual guidance – all the better. This being said, often it’s the ones who text you every morning to check how you’re doing that are the most priceless.
*Names have been changed
