King Charles III delivers moving Christmas speech

King Charles has nodded to his late mother Queen Elizabeth in his first Christmas address, which was centred around “kindness”. See what he said.

When Britons woke up on December 25 for the King’s landmark Christmas speech, a stark new royal era unfolded with the new monarch thanking the people for the “love”and “sympathy” they have shown over the death Queen Elizabeth II.

The annual broadcast, one of the late Queen’s most beloved of traditions where she addressed the nation with a rare personal discourse that is an integral part of Christmas Day for families, this year saw a reflective Charles take centre stage at St George’s Chapel in Windsor “so close to where my beloved mother, the late Queen, had been laid to rest with my dear father,” he said.

King Charles III seen during the recording of his first Christmas broadcast in the Quire of St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle. Picture: Victoria Jones – Pool/Getty Images

Sharing in his loss for the Queen, he said: “I am reminded that Christmas is a particularly poignant time for all of us who have lost loved ones,” he said.

“We feel their absence at every familiar turn of the season and remember them in each cherished tradition.”

In his message the King said of his mother, who died on 8 September after a record 70 years on the British throne, she held an immovable belief in “light overcoming darkness”.

“My mother‘s belief in the power of that light was an essential part of her faith in God, but also her faith in people – and it is one that I share with my whole heart,” the King said.

“It is a belief in the power of every single person to touch with goodness and compassion the lives of others and shine a light in the world around them.”

Appearing pained and at once forcibly cheery, he spoke movingly about the tireless dedication of the armed forces and emergency services to keep the country safe and who “performed so

magnificently as we mourn the passing of our late Queen,” he said.

Building his broadcast message around “kindness”, he thanked the health and public service workers who dedicate their lives to helping others.

In his message broadcast to the Commonwealth, the King acknowledged the humanity, time and generosity shown by people to those struggling to pay their bills or in countries struck by disaster or famine.

The King also recalled his trip to Bethlehem where he visited the chapel marked by a star at the spot where Jesus is believed to have been born.

“It meant more to me to see where the light that came into the world was born,” he said.

“While Christmas is a Christian celebration, the power of light overcoming darkness is celebrated across all boundaries of faith and belief, so, whatever faith you have, if you have none, we can all find light and let’s celebrate it together.

“With all my heart I wish you all of your Christmas of peace, love, an everlasting light.”

The Queen, in a gold lame dress, is seen in the Long Library at Sandringham shortly after making the traditional Christmas Day broadcast to the nation. She began the tradition in 1957. Picture: PA Images via Getty Images

The last time a king gave the address, it was the Queen’s late father, King George VI, who took the microphone to reflect on the events of 1951.

Her Majesty had delivered every televised festive speech since the inaugural broadcast of 1957, before which her message had been carried on radio since 1932.

She was said to have relished the annual address so much she delivered it effortlessly earning the sobriquet “One Take Windsor”.

She gave her first televised Christmas speech in 1957, saying, “I very much hope that this new medium will make my Christmas message more personal and direct.”

Her comment showed remarkable foreknowledge. In the following 65 years this new medium fostered a close and warm bond between the monarch and the public.

She was the first television monarch.

When she was young television was a young medium, incapable, in 1937, for example, of recording anything other than film.

A picture released on December 23, 2021 shows Queen Elizabeth II posing for a photograph as she recorded her annual Christmas Day message. Picture: AFP

As the Queen acceded to the throne and moved into the public eye, television ran beyond broadcasts to capture major events, as well as to record those events on tape for dissemination and posterity.

For the Queen’s Coronation in 1953, one of the defining moments in television history, cumbersome cameras were fitted into Westminster Abbey and along the procession to deliver footage to American audiences the same day.

MPs debated whether it was right that such a significant service should be beamed in to front rooms where the homeless were drinking tea.

It was the Queen herself who insisted the broadcast go ahead.

In the two months preceding the broadcast 2.5 million TV sets were sold; 14 years before there were 20,000 in the whole of the UK.

The Queen had made television the forum for mass collective experiences, central to British family life.

Originally published as King Charles III delivers moving Christmas speech