December 25th 2022 will see the first Christmas broadcast to the United Kingdom and British Commonwealth by King Charles III, and the first by a monarch other than the late Queen Elizabeth II since 1951.
As a constitutional monarch, the late Queen’s addresses to the nation, the broader Commonwealth of Nations, and, in her early years on the throne, the British Empire, were not politically partisan — not by the standards of their time, at least — but focused strongly on themes of Christian fellowship and, controversially in an increasingly atheistic age, her personal faith in Christ.
This was apparent from her very first speech in 1952, after her accession but before her formal coronation, broadcast only over radio as televisions were then still something of an innovation not present in many households.
“Most of you to whom I am speaking will be in your own homes, but I have a special thought for those who are serving their country in distant lands far from their families,” she said, perhaps thinking particularly of the British and Empire servicemen fighting in the still-ongoing Korean War.
“We belong, all of us, to the British Commonwealth and Empire, that immense union of nations, with their homes set in all the four corners of the earth. Like our own families, it can be a great power for good — a force which I believe can be of immeasurable benefit to all humanity,” she said — her words in some ways a measure of how much Britain had changed by the time she died, with Britain’s history and historic statues under assault and the idea that her Empire had been a force for good considered a right-wing “culture war” talking point rather than commentary appropriate for an impartial head of state.
Tellingly, she concluded this first-ever broadcast by urging listeners, ahead of her upcoming coronation, to “pray that God may give me wisdom and strength to carry out the solemn promises I shall be making, and that I may faithfully serve Him and you, all the days of my life.”
The Queen came perhaps as close as she ever did to outlining a manifesto during her first televised Christmas broadcast in 1957, which addressed “the speed at which things are changing all around us”.
“I am not surprised that many people feel lost and unable to decide what to hold on to and what to discard. How to take advantage of the new life without losing the best of the old,” she told viewers.
“But it is not the new inventions which are the difficulty. The trouble is caused by unthinking people who carelessly throw away ageless ideals as if they were old and outworn machinery,” she went on — a surprisingly explicit and very much conservative diagnosis of society’s chief ailments at a time when old-fashioned state socialism was mainstream and sympathy for the Soviet Union widespread on the political left .
“They would have religion thrown aside, morality in personal and public life made meaningless, honesty counted as foolishness and self-interest set up in place of self-restraint,” she continued, with unfortunate prescience, concluding her address by quoting at length from The Pilgrim’s Progress and wishing the coming year would bring viewers “God’s blessing and all the things you long for.”
While the monarch was perhaps never more forthright in calling out the pitfalls of modernity in her many long decades on the throne than in 1957, she never refrained from putting Jesus Christ, the proverbial “reason for the season”, at the heart of her Christmas broadcasts, even as secularism, mass migration, and the gospel of “inclusion” drove Christianity increasingly out of public life.
“Christmas is a Christian festival which celebrates the birth of the Prince of Peace. At times it is almost hidden by the merry making and tinsel, but the essential message of Christmas is still that we all belong to the great brotherhood of man,” she said in 1968, the year Martin Luther King was shot dead in the United States and something of a turning point for American and European politics.
“Christmas is the festival of peace. It is God’s will that it should be our constant endeavour to establish ‘Peace on earth, goodwill towards men’,” she concluded.
In 1975, with the Commonwealth and wider world still feeling the effects of the 1973 oil crisis, the Yom Kippur War, and a bitterly contested referendum in which the British people were railroaded into voting for membership of the EEC, as the EU then was, on a lie that it would involve no loss of “essential sovereignty”, she again emphasised that the Christmas message was one of hope.
“So much of the time we feel that our lives are dominated by great impersonal forces beyond our control, the scale of things and organisations seems to get bigger and more inhuman,” the monarch observed.
“We are horrified by brutal and senseless violence, and above all the whole fabric of our lives is threatened by inflation, the frightening sickness of the world today,” she continued in comments which would not feel out of place if repeated by the King today.
“Then Christmas comes, and once again we are reminded that people matter, and it is our relationship with one another that is most important,” she continued.
“For most of us — I wish it could be for everyone — this is a holiday, and I think it’s worth reminding ourselves why. We are celebrating a birthday — the birthday of a child born nearly 2,000 years ago, who grew up and lived for only about 30 years.
“That one person, by his example and by his revelation of the good which is in us all, has made an enormous difference to the lives of people who have come to understand his teaching. His simple message of love has been turning the world upside down ever since.”
This focus on the eternal figured ever more strongly in the monarch’s Christmas broadcasts as the decades of her reign — the longest in British history — wore on, perhaps because she did not count on living to the age of 96 after her father’s life was cut short at just 56.
In 1984 she welcomed the “happy arrival of our fourth grandchild”, the ill-starred Prince Harry, who is today trashing the Royal Family and the Queen’s beloved Commonwealth, which she described in the broadcast as a “family” which “[n]otwithstanding the strains and stresses of nationalism, different cultures and religions and its growing membership… has still managed to hold together and to make a real contribution to the prevention of violence and discord.”
She also said that it was “particularly at Christmas, which marks the birth of the Prince of Peace, that we should work to heal old wounds and to abandon prejudice and suspicion” — words her grandson and his wife might do well to reflect on heading into 2023.
In 1997, with Tony Blair’s New Labour in power and poised to change British society irrevocably, and her family reeling from the fallout from Princess Diana’s death, she spoke of both the funeral of her daughter-in-law and the celebration of her Golden Wedding Anniversary at “the Christian heart of this United Kingdom” in Westminster Abbey that year, “one [event] almost unbearably sad, and one, for Prince Philip and me, tremendously happy.”
“St Paul spoke of the first Christmas as the kindness of God dawning upon the world. The world needs that kindness now more than ever – the kindness and consideration for others that disarms malice and allows us to get on with one another with respect and affection,” she said.
“Christmas reassures us that God is with us today.”
With the dawn of a new millennium, an amazing 2,000 years since the birth of Christ, the Queen urged people to reflect on the real meaning of Christmas — perhaps surprisingly, given the Blair era, in which the increasingly venal political class did not “do God”, was now well underway.
“[A]s this year draws to a close I would like to reflect more directly and more personally on what lies behind all the celebrations of these past twelve months,” the monarch began.
“Christmas is the traditional, if not the actual, birthday of a man who was destined to change the course of our history. And today we are celebrating the fact that Jesus Christ was born two thousand years ago; this is the true Millennium anniversary,” she added, in no uncertain terms:
The simple facts of Jesus’ life give us little clue as to the influence he was to have on the world. As a boy he learnt his father’s trade as a carpenter. He then became a preacher, recruiting twelve supporters to help him.
But his ministry only lasted a few years and he himself never wrote anything down. In his early thirties he was arrested, tortured and crucified with two criminals. His death might have been the end of the story, but then came the resurrection and with it the foundation of the Christian faith.
Even in our very material age the impact of Christ’s life is all around us. If you want to see an expression of Christian faith you have only to look at our awe-inspiring cathedrals and abbeys, listen to their music, or look at their stained glass windows, their books and their pictures.
The Queen’s final Christmas broadcast, in 2021, proved to be prophetic.
Well into her nineties, the Queen had lost her husband of seven decades, a man who had been born a Greek prince, seen combat with the Royal Navy during the Second World War, and passed away just shy of his 100th birthday.
She herself had been prevented from mourning properly, and from seeing as much of her troubled family as she may have liked, by the Chinese coronavirus pandemic and government lockdowns — but remained steadfast throughout this difficult period.
“Christmas can be hard for those who have lost loved ones. This year, especially, I understand why,” she said.
“But life, of course, consists of final partings as well as first meetings,” she continued, recalling that her husband “was always mindful of this sense of passing the baton” — her own final parting with her people and passing of the baton to her son, the then-Prince Charles, destined to come before she could address them at Christmastime again.
“[E]ven with one familiar laugh missing this year, there will be joy in Christmas, as we have the chance to reminisce, and see anew the wonder of the festive season through the eyes of our young children, of whom we were delighted to welcome four more this year,” she concluded.
“They teach us all a lesson — just as the Christmas story does — that in the birth of a child, there is a new dawn with endless potential.
“It is this simplicity of the Christmas story that makes it so universally appealing: simple happenings that formed the starting point of the life of Jesus — a man whose teachings have been handed down from generation to generation, and have been the bedrock of my faith. His birth marked a new beginning. As the carol says, ‘The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight’.”
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