Queen's Christmas Day speeches - radio interruptions, reflection and 3D glasses

At 3pm on 25 December, millions of us will sit down in front of the television to watch King Charles deliver his third Christmas Day address to the nation. It is one of the biggest rituals of the season, and he follows in the footsteps of the late Queen Elizabeth, who gave 69 Christmas messages during her long reign.

In 2022 royal commentator Duncan Larcombe said Charles’ speech was "dominated by the tribute to his mother, which was absolutely as we expected. He also focused on the war in Ukraine and the cost-of-living crisis, and unfortunately, those still remain as pressing issues this year. But while Charles’ speeches have always tackled the big problems and he doesn’t shy away from them, he won’t want his Christmas Day message to be politically motivated. It will all be very carefully considered.”

The King’s broadcast in 2022, only three months after the loss of his mother, came from St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, which he noted was “so close to where my beloved mother, the late Queen, is laid to rest with my dear father”.

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Delivering the message standing up rather than sitting formally behind a desk as the Queen usually did, he began with an expression of thanks to the public, saying, “I am reminded of the deeply touching letters, cards and messages which so many of you have sent my wife and myself and I cannot thank you enough for the love and sympathy you have shown our whole family.

"Christmas is a particularly poignant time for all of us who have lost loved ones. We feel their absence at every familiar turn of the season and remember them in each cherished tradition.”

Referring to the “great anxiety and hardship” hitting the nation, Charles stressed that community spirit was the “very foundation of our society”, before praising members of the emergency services, Armed Forces, teachers, health and social care professionals and charities.

“I particularly want to pay tribute to all those wonderfully kind people who so generously give food or donations, or that most precious commodity of all, their time, to support those around them in greatest need, together with the many charitable organisations which do such extraordinary work in the most difficult circumstances,” he said.

Echoing the late Queen’s final Christmas broadcast a year earlier, a choir sang O Little Town Of Bethlehem, the King highlighting its message of “light overcoming darkness”. He ended by saying, “With all my heart, I wish each of you a Christmas of peace, happiness and everlasting light.”

Here we look back on other memorable Christmas Day messages from across the decades…

1952

As the clock struck 3pm on 25 December 1952, Queen Elizabeth delivered her first Christmas Day message live from her study at Sandringham. Just 10 months into her reign, her words were beamed to an audience of millions across the world.

As families gathered around the radio, they heard the monarch pay tribute to her father, King George VI, who had died in February that year. In the address, she told how “we belong, all of us, to the British Commonwealth and Empire, that immense union of nations, with their homes set in all four corners of the Earth”.

The Queen also asked listeners to pray for her at her Coronation the following June, so 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”.

1953

Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh were at the start of their six-month tour of the Commonwealth.

In a message recorded at Government House in Auckland, New Zealand, the monarch said the world voyage aimed to show that the Crown “is not merely an abstract symbol of our unity but a personal and living bond between you and me”.

1957

In her first televised address, the young Queen said, “I very much hope that this new medium will make my Christmas message more personal and direct. It is inevitable that I should seem a rather remote figure to many of you.

"A successor to the kings and queens of history; someone whose face may be familiar in newspapers and films but who never really touches your personal lives. But now at least for a few minutes I welcome you to the peace of my own home.”

In charge of the TV production was Richard Webber, who said, “We had a run-through on the day and then went straight into the live broadcast. The Queen was extremely accomplished with the teleprompter and read the message brilliantly.”

During the speech, freak weather conditions caused American police radio transmissions to interfere with the British broadcast, and bemused viewers heard a US officer say, “Joe, I’m gonna grab a quick coffee.”

1969

The Queen gave a written message this year, as she felt July’s investiture of Charles as Prince of Wales and a big TV documentary, The Royal Family, were enough exposure for one year.

She acknowledged that the 60s “would be over but not out of our memories. Historians will record them as the decade in which men first reached out beyond our own planet and set foot on the moon.”

Without a Christmas message to broadcast, BBC1 and BBC2 repeated The Royal Family, which followed the family for a year. Watched by 30 million viewers in the UK and 350 million worldwide, the collection of private home movies strengthened the royals’ popularity, but the Queen reportedly regretted giving such access and asked that it never be shown again.

1972

To mark the late Queen and Prince Philip’s 25th wedding anniversary, the Christmas message included scenes from their celebrations, with Her Majesty saying how “my whole family has been deeply touched by the affection you have shown to us”.

She also referred to the violence in Northern Ireland, sending “a special message of sympathy to all those men, women and children who have suffered and endured so much”.

Of the UK’s preparations to join the European Economic Community, she said, “Britain and these other European countries see in the Community a new opportunity for the future. They believe that the things they have in common are more important than the things which divide them, and … the whole world will benefit.”

1982

The 50th anniversary of the first Christmas message by her grandfather King George V saw Elizabeth filmed in the library of Windsor Castle for the first time.

In a year which saw British troops fighting in the Falklands War in the South Atlantic Ocean, she told how William became Conqueror after invading England by sea.

“It was the voyages of discovery by the great seamen of Queen Elizabeth’s day which laid the foundations of modern trade; and to this day 90 per cent of it still goes by sea.”

She added that in Britain, “we owe our independence to the seamen who fought the Armada nearly 400 years ago and to Nelson and his band of brothers who destroyed Napoleon’s dreams of invasion”.

1990

Sir David Attenborough produced Queen Elizabeth’s Christmas messages between 1986 and 1991. He is pictured with the monarch at a recording session at Buckingham Palace in 1990.

That year, Her Majesty paid tribute to the role of the Armed Services as war loomed in Iraq and Kuwait. “The servicemen in the Gulf who are spending Christmas at their posts under this threat [of war] are much in our thoughts,” she said, weeks before the launch of Operation Desert Storm.

1997

The 40th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s first televised message was also the first to air on the internet. But there were mixed emotions, as the Queen spoke of her “shock and sorrow” at the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, before reflecting on the joy of her and Prince Philip’s Golden Wedding anniversary.

She also expressed her delight at being invited to India and Pakistan on the 50th anniversary of their independence, and welcomed the imminent devolution of power to Scotland and Wales “to give them a greater say”.

The broadcast was made from the White Drawing Room at Windsor Castle, to mark the end of restoration work five years after a huge fire.

2002

To end her Golden Jubilee year, the Queen told how the celebrations had evoked “something more lasting and profound – a sense of belonging and pride in country, town or community, a sense of sharing a common heritage enriched by the cultural, ethnic and religious diversity of our 21st-century society”.

There was also reflection on the deaths of her sister Margaret in February and her mother in March, as she said, “My own sadness was tempered by the generous tributes so many of you paid to the service they gave this country and the wider Commonwealth.”

2012

The Queen’s Christmas message from Buckingham Palace was recorded in 3D for the first time, and afterwards the monarch put on a pair of 3D glasses to watch it.

She paid tribute to Great Britain’s Olympic and Paralympic athletes for inspiring the nation during a “splendid summer of sport” and said, “I am always struck by how the spirit of togetherness lies also at the heart of the Christmas story.”

2017

On the 60th anniversary of her first televised message, the Queen paid tribute to survivors of the London and Manchester terror attacks, calling it a “privilege” to meet them, and saying they showed “extraordinary bravery and resilience”.

She also reflected on the “sheer awfulness” of the Grenfell Tower fire, and said such events made her “grateful for the blessings of home and family, and in particular for 70 years of marriage”.

She continued, “I don’t know that anyone had invented the term ‘platinum’ for a 70th wedding anniversary when I was born. You weren’t expected to be around that long. Even Prince Philip has decided to slow down a little – having, as he economically put it, ‘done his bit’.”