Godparent is one of the few titles in British life that can mean almost nothing or almost everything, and the difference is decided entirely by what happened after the christening. If yours is the second sort — the adult who turned up to the school play, who was easier to ring than a parent, who has remembered every birthday without being reminded — then a round number is the one occasion where that can reasonably be said out loud. The awkwardness is that the role sounds ceremonial and the party will not be. Nobody wants a sermon between the buffet and the cake, and a card that leans on the church side of the arrangement reads oddly to a person who last set foot in one at a wedding. What follows is written for the secular version: wishes for a godmother and a godfather, texts from a grown-up godchild and from the child’s parents, something to send when the years have thinned the contact, short lines for a card, and a few words for anyone asked to speak.
For a godmother
Godmother is a title that can mean very little or a great deal, and in your case it has meant a great deal for as long as I can remember. Have a wonderful birthday. You have earned a proper fuss.
Happy birthday to the woman who has been quietly on my side since before I was capable of forming an opinion about it. I hope today is spent being looked after rather than doing the looking after.
You took on a job with no hours attached and no way of resigning from it, and you have done it beautifully. Many happy returns. I hope the year ahead asks rather less of you than the last few have.
A big one for you, which seems unlikely, given that you have not visibly changed in the whole time I have known you. Wishing you a lovely day, good company, and a year with plenty of nothing in it.
There is a short list of adults who paid attention to me when they were not strictly required to, and you are at the top of it by some distance. Thank you for that, and have a very happy birthday.
You have remembered every one of my birthdays, which makes it faintly embarrassing that I needed reminding about this one. The debt is acknowledged. Have a marvellous day and a restful week after it.
Wishing you a lovely birthday and a year that is kind to you. Godmothers are supposed to be occasional and ceremonial. You have been neither, and my life is measurably better for the difference.
For a godfather
You have never made a speech about any of it, which is entirely in keeping. Happy birthday. Thank you for the lifts, the borrowed tools and the complete absence of lectures over the years.
A round number for a man who claims to take no notice of numbers. We are taking notice on your behalf. Wishing you a good day and a year with rather fewer things going wrong in it.
Godfather is a title that suits you better than it has any right to, given how little ceremony you have ever tolerated. Many happy returns. I hope the day is exactly as low-key as you want it.
Thank you for being the adult I could ask the things I could not ask at home. That was worth a good deal more than you were ever told at the time. Have a very happy birthday and a straightforward year.
You turned up. That is the whole review, and it covers about three decades. Wishing you a fine birthday and considerably more time to yourself in the twelve months ahead.
You have spent a long time being useful to other people without once mentioning it, so today you are going to be thanked in public and there is very little you can do about it. Enjoy the day.
Wishing you a good one. You were handed a role with no instructions and worked it out as you went along, which by all accounts is what you have done with everything else. It has gone rather well.
From a grown-up godchild
It has been a long time since anyone described me as your godchild, and I find I still rather like the arrangement. Happy birthday, and thank you for keeping it going long after the obligation ran out.
The formal part was somebody else’s idea and we were both too young or too polite to argue about it. Everything that came afterwards was entirely your own doing. Many happy returns, and thank you for it.
You have been a steady presence through a couple of decades in which very little else was. I hope today is a good one, and I hope I get to return some of it before I am the one with the big birthday.
I am old enough now to see how much effort a godparent has to put in for the role to mean anything at all. You put it in. Wishing you a wonderful day and a year that gives something back for once.
Grown-up godchild reporting in, slightly late as always. Have a brilliant birthday. Whatever else I have got wrong over the years, I have never once had to wonder whether you were on my side.
There was a stretch in my twenties when I was hard work, and you carried on turning up regardless. I have not forgotten that. Thank you for a patience that nobody had asked you to supply.
Wishing you a lovely birthday. Since the occasion allows it, I would like to put on record that you have been one of the best things about my family, and you were not even obliged to be in it.
From the child’s parents
From all of us, with thanks that are long overdue. Asking you was one of the better decisions we have made, and you have taken it far more seriously than we had any right to expect. Have a wonderful day.
Wishing you a very happy birthday from the whole household, including the one you were originally assigned to, who has drawn something unidentifiable on the back of this card and insists it is you.
We handed you a small child and an extremely vague job description, and you have been remarkable about both ever since. Many happy returns. We are lucky to have you and we are well aware of it.
Happy birthday from the four of us. Thank you for the school plays you sat through, the collections you were roped into, and a general willingness to be summoned at very short notice.
A big one, and we fully intend to make a proper fuss of it. Thank you for being the person we could ring when we did not want to ring a parent. That has mattered more than the title ever did.
From the parents, who are quietly aware that you have done rather more of this than most. Wishing you a lovely day and a year in which somebody else does the organising for a change.
When you have drifted apart
We have not managed to speak properly in years and there is no good reason for it that I can offer. A big birthday seemed the right moment to say that I think of you often and hope life has been decent.
You may not have expected to hear from me. I saw the date and could not let it go past without a word. Wishing you a very happy birthday and a year that treats you well.
Time got away from both of us, which happens and is nobody’s fault in particular. Many happy returns. If you ever fancy a proper catch-up, the offer stands and it does not come with an expiry date.
It has been a long gap and I would rather acknowledge it than write as though it had not happened. Happy birthday. You were important to me, and you have stayed that way at a distance.
I do not know what your life looks like now, which is my own doing entirely. What I do know is that you were good to me when it counted. Wishing you a lovely birthday and a very good year.
A short message across a lot of silence, with nothing whatsoever expected back. I hope today is a happy one and that somebody is making the fuss of you that the number deserves.
Short enough for a card
Many happy returns. Thank you for a great deal more than the title ever required of you.
Have a wonderful birthday. You have been the best sort of godmother — present, and never once dutiful.
Wishing you a lovely day and a very easy year. From your godson, with thanks.
Happy birthday. Still glad they picked you, all these years on.
To a godfather who has never made a fuss about anything: today somebody else will. Enjoy it.
A good one to you. Thank you for turning up, again and again, for as long as I can remember.
Wishing you a splendid birthday and a quiet year. Both are somewhat overdue.
Thank you for everything. Have a marvellous day, and do not let anyone make you sing.
Many happy returns from your godchild, who is far too old to still be calling himself that.
Have a lovely birthday. You have been a fixed point, and I have relied on it more than I said.
From all of us here, with love and with thanks. Have a wonderful day and a lazy weekend.
Happy birthday. The card is small; the gratitude behind it is not.
Wishing you a very good one. Thank you for years of entirely unadvertised usefulness.
A few words at the party
Half a minute and then I will hand back. I am not family and I am not an old school friend — I am the godchild, which is a role most people assume expires at about eleven. In this case it did not, and that is entirely down to the person we are here for.
I have been asked to say something and the honest version is short. Godparent is a title that usually gathers dust in a drawer. This one has been in continuous use for as long as I have been alive. Please raise a glass.
Two sentences, because the food is already out. Somewhere in this room is a person who took on a child that was not theirs and has never once treated it as a formality. That is the whole speech. To many more years of it.
I will keep this shorter than anyone is expecting. A fairly vague arrangement was made a very long time ago, and it has been honoured every year since without a single reminder being needed. Thank you, and have a very happy birthday.
Quickly, before everyone sits down. The people here have known our birthday guest in about six different capacities, and every one of them will tell you the same two things: reliable, and quietly funny about it.
One thing only. When I was small, this was the adult who spoke to me like a person rather than a short guest. I have tried to do the same since and it turns out to be far harder than it looks. Charge your glasses.
Questions and answers
Do you mention the christening itself, or is that ancient history by the time of a big birthday?
Only if you have an actual detail from it, in which case it is one of the best things you can put in the card. Who held whom, what the weather did, the argument about the name, the fact that nobody present had the faintest idea what they were agreeing to — those are family history and they work because they are specific. What does not work is the generic version, the promise you made all those years ago, which is filler dressed as sentiment and reads as though you could not think of anything. If you were not there or nobody has ever told you the story, skip it entirely and write about something you remember first-hand. Borrowed nostalgia is transparent on paper.
Does thanking them on their birthday turn the card into a thank-you note?
It can, and the difference is where the gratitude sits. A card that is entirely thanks reads as a summing-up, and summing-up is what people do when something is finishing — which is not the note you want on a milestone. Put one specific thank-you in the middle, keep it to a single thing rather than a list, and let the card open and close on the birthday itself. That ordering matters more than the wording. The other useful move is to write about them in the present tense somewhere: what they are like now, not only what they did when you were nine. A godparent on a round number is being quietly reassured that the role has not become historical.
You are one of several godchildren, and they will all be sending something. How do you write one that is not interchangeable?
Write about the version of them that only you got. Godparents behave differently with each godchild — one gets taken to the football, one gets the difficult conversations, one gets rescued from a station at midnight — and none of those overlap. Name yours, in one line, with the detail intact. Everything else in the card can be ordinary. What makes a card interchangeable is not the phrasing but the fact that it describes a general quality: kind, generous, always there. Every sibling and cousin will supply those, and the pile on the mantelpiece will read as one long paragraph. A single unshared detail is worth more than a page of correct adjectives, and it is the one nobody else can write.
A fiftieth and an eightieth are very different occasions. What changes between them?
The direction of the card, rather than the warmth in it. At fifty the person is mid-stride, so the natural material is what they are still doing, and a card that looks only backwards can read like an early retirement notice they did not ask for. At eighty, looking back is not merely safe but wanted, and one specific old memory outperforms any amount of general good wishing. The wish at the end shifts with it. Wishing a busy fifty-year-old a quiet year is a joke; wishing an eighty-year-old the same thing is a kindness. Match the wish to the life actually being lived and the rest of the card arranges itself around it.
Your godparent never had children of their own. Does that change what the card should say?
It raises the stakes of the card without changing a word of the advice, and the trap is trying to acknowledge it. Anything along the lines of you were like a parent to me, or we were the family you never had, hands them a comparison they did not invite and can only agree with awkwardly. Say what the relationship gave you rather than what it substituted for. The other thing worth knowing is that a card from a godchild in this situation is often one of very few that arrive from a younger generation, so it is read more carefully than you would expect and kept longer. That is an argument for handwriting it and for saying the thing you have been putting off.