Prince George's
christening on Wednesday comes 31 years after his father Prince William
in 1982. Here are 10 ways in which baptisms have changed since then.
1. There are fewer christenings
George's christening is the exception rather than the rule. And not just because he's a royal.
Although christenings were already in decline, one in three infants was still baptised into the Church of England in 1980. By 2011 that had fallen to just over one in 10. The overall number of baptisms - of people of all ages - witnessed a similar decline, from 266,000 in 1980 to 140,000 in 2011.
It's a similar story in the Catholic Church, although the major drop-off in baptisms happened between 1964 and 1977, when the number halved. There's been a far gentler downward trend over the past three decades, recently stabilising at about 60,000 baptisms a year.
2. But more godparents
Liz Hurley chose Sir Elton John to be one of her son's godfathers
And it's not just a celebrity fad.
"In practice it seems to be changing," says the Archdeacon of Leicester, Tim Stratford, although there's been no doctrinal change. That's because both the Church of England and the Catholic Church only have minimum requirements, of three and one respectively.
"It used to be the minimum that was the issue," says Stratford. "Now the issue for a lot of clergy is that often people are choosing a lot of godparents.
"The registers we have, for instance, often only have four spaces to put godparents' names but people may be choosing six or eight."
