Royal Christmas Message

Home / Christmas / Royal Christmas Message
by gerryadmin

At 3 pm on every Christmas Day since 1932 the reigning British monarch has spoken to the people of the Empire and Commonwealth. The first to make a royal Christmas broadcast was George V, who had been asked by BBC General Manager John Reith for such a speech since 1923. Written by Rudyard Kipling, the speech was delivered from Sandringham Castle. Listening to it has become part of the traditional British Christmas afternoon activity.

The First Royal Christmas Broadcast

Through one of the marvels of modern science I am enabled this Christmas Day to speak to all my peoples throughout the Empire. I take it as a good omen that wireless should have reached its present perfection at a time when the Empire has been linked in closer union, for it offers us immense possibilities to make that union closer still.

  It may be that our future will lay upon us more than one stern test. Our past will have taught us how to meet it unshaken.  For the present the work to which we are all equally bound is to arrive at a reasoned tranquillity within our borders, to regain prosperity without self-seeking, and to carry with us those whom the burden of past years has disheartened or overborne.

My life’s aim has been to serve as I might towards those ends. Your loyalty, your confidence in me has been my abundant reward. I speak now from my home and from my heart to you all; to men and women so cut off by the snows, the desert, or the sea that only voices out of the air can reach them; to those cut off from fuller life by blindness, sickness, or infirmity, and to those who are celebrating this day with their children and their grandchildren—to all, to each, I wish a happy Christmas. God bless you.

Queen Elizabeth II made her first Christmas Broadcast on radio in 1952, and on television in 1957. Like her father George VI and grandfather George V, the Queen used to broadcast her message live but since 1960, the Christmas Message has always pre-recorded, and sent in advance to Commonwealth countries for broadcast at a suitable local time. The television programme incoporates material specially recorded for it during the preceding year. The speech is now also made available on the Internet.

 

March 22

Home / Today in History / March 22
by gerryadmin

1933

The Nazi dictatorship begins

After long years of campaigning against the democratic Weimar Republic in general and the German Communist Party (KPD) and Social Democratic Party (SPD) in particular, Hitler’s National Socialist German Worker’s Party (NSDAP or “Nazis) received the majority of seats in the March 1933 general election. The arson attack on the Reichstag (Parliament building) a few days before the vote had been attributed to Communist sympathizers and greatly aided Hitler’s victory.

Hitler used his electoral success to immediately put forward legislation that would effectively end democratic rule in Germany and transfer all power to the Chancellor and his cabinet. The “Reichstag Fire Decree” suspended civil liberties and provided cover for the outlawing of the KPD and the arrest of Communists. The Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich (“Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich”) or “Enabling Act” passed on this day removed all effective power from the legislature and allowed direct rule by Hitler. The only party to oppose it was the Social Democratic Party, many of whose members soon found themselves on the run, unemployed, or in jail. Within a few months all political parties but the Nazis had been outlawed and the Thousand Year Reich well established.

Thermopylae

Home / Something Wise / Thermopylae
by gerryadmin

One of the my favourite poets is C.P. Cavafy, a gay Greek-Egyptian civil servant of the early 20th century. In this poem he honours the Spartan infantry who in 480 BC made a stand against an overwhelmingly superior Persian invasion force, before a treacherous local guide, Ephialtis, showed the enemy a way to attack the defenders from behind. Cavafy uses that example to praise all those who, in different ways, imitate the Spartans in their daily lives.

Honour to those who in the life they lead
define and guard a Thermopylae.
Never betraying what is right,
consistent and just in all they do
but showing pity also, and compassion;
generous when they are rich, and when they are poor,
still generous in small ways,
still helping as much as they can;
always speaking the truth,
yet without hating those who lie.
 
And even more honor is due to them
when they foresee (as many do foresee)
that in the end Ephialtis will make his appearance,
that the Medes will break through after all.

The Passions of Carol

Home / Christmas / The Passions of Carol
by gerryadmin

There have been many variations on Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol: it has been set in London, in the American Midwest, in black ghettoes and modern television studios; Scrooge has been played by men, women, Muppets, puppets and cartoon ducks. Few versions, however, have stretched the genre as much as The Passions of Carol, a 1975 pornographic movie starring Merrie Holiday. Directed by Shaun Costello, the movie examines the change of heart Christmas brings to Carol Scrooge, a cruel editor of a skin magazine.

 

The Parson Has Lost His Cloak

Home / Christmas / The Parson Has Lost His Cloak
by gerryadmin

A traditional English Christmas game whose rules are now lost to us. A passage from The Spectator of 1712 refers to it:

Mr Spectator

I desire to know in your Next, if the merry Game of the Parson has lost his Cloke, is not mightily in Vogue amongst the fine Ladies this Christmas; because I see they wear Hoods of all Colours, which I suppose is for that Purpose; if it is, and you think it proper, I will carry some of those Hoods with me to our Ladies in Yorkshire; because they injoined me to bring them something from London that was very new. If you can tell any Thing in which I can obey their Commands more agreeably, be pleas’d to inform me, and you will extreamly oblige,

Your humble Servant

Der Haus-Christ

Home / Christmas / Der Haus-Christ
by gerryadmin

Literally “The House Christ”, a sixteenth-century German term for the gift-bringer. German Protestants who wished to abolish the Catholic cult of saints needed a replacement for St. Nicholas as the traditional bearer of presents at Christmas. Clergymen then spoke of Christ himself as the bringer of good things at Christmas and his collection of gifts as the “Christ-bundle”. From this developed the belief in the “Christkindl”, a child-like figure dressed in white representing the Christ Child as bringer of Christmas gifts.

And I don’t even have a bow tie

Home / Something Wise / And I don’t even have a bow tie
by gerryadmin

My father gave me three excellent pieces of advice: 1. Never trust a man in a ready-made bow tie. A man who cannot concentrate long enough to fasten a bow tie is never going to be a well of nuanced or intriguing conversation. 2. One Vodka Martini is not enough, two is plenty and three is too many. 3. Live your life with passion, or there is no point. You might as well drink three Vodka Martinis with a man sporting clip-on neckwear.

— Sandi Toksvig