George’s dayLike Prince George, who

George’s day
Like Prince George, who today receives his name at the font, Queen Victoria was to have been named after a King George – who at the time was still the dissolute Prince Regent. As a godfather he was disobliging, and sent word that he refused to allow the infant princess to be christened Georgiana. The Archbishop of Canterbury stood at the golden font at Kensington Palace, waiting to hear which names Prinny would allow. No, not Charlotte. Certainly not Augusta. Very well, Alexandrina. And one more name, that of the child’s mother: Victoria. So “Drina” she became, until, at the age of nine, Victoria was tried out. It took; and the name now characterises an era.
For all the complications of the modern Royal family, today’s events bear a happier air. George is to be baptised (the word that the Prayer Book uses) in the Chapel Royal, unlike his forebears. (The chapel at Buckingham Palace was bombed in the Second World War.) The essentials are the water and the words, which are accompanied, as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, pointed out yesterday, by a sign of the Cross on the forehead. To that mark is added a rather surprising exhortation, to this unarmed little soldier of Christ, “manfully to fight under his banner against sin, the world, and the devil”. Yet it is not an unfitting ambition for a future Supreme Governor of the Church of England.
By this rite of passage, Prince George joins the majority of British people who regard themselves as Christians. It does nothing, though, to alienate him from those who do not. The Church of England is established by law, but is not a state church excluding citizens outside it from national life. And who does not share the warm emotion of young parents seeing their firstborn (wrapped in Honiton lace) enter a widening circle of protectors, friends and well-wishers?