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When did Queen Elizabeth II make her first Christmas broadcast?
When did Queen Elizabeth II give her first Christmas message?
What was the Queen's first Christmas message?
What was the Queen's Christmas broadcast?
George's daughter and successor, Queen Elizabeth II, delivered her first Christmas message from her study at Sandringham House, at 3:07 PM on 25 December 1952, approximately ten months after her father's death. Five years later, the message was broadcast on television for the first time. [9]
After her Accession on 6 February 1952, The Queen broadcast her first Christmas Message live on the radio from her study at Sandringham, Norfolk. In her message, she paid tribute to her late father, and asked people to remember her at the time of her Coronation the following June.
Queen Elizabeth II made her first Christmas Broadcast in December 1952, following her Accession earlier in the year. In her Broadcast, she spoke of carrying on the tradition passed on to her by her father:
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The 1957 Christmas Day address humanized the monarch and acknowledged a shift in the position's role from aloof ruler to accessible figurehead.
King George V may have invented the tradition of delivering a Christmas Day message to the subjects of the British monarchy worldwide in 1932, but it was his granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II, who first televised the annual event 25 years later.
While George’s speeches were radio broadcasts, as were Elizabeth’s first addresses from 1952-1956, her historic 1957 speech aired on live TV from her home in Sandringham. The broadcasts offered viewers a rare, humanizing glimpse inside her residence and at her mannerisms, while reaching a vast audience. In her first broadcast, Elizabeth also noted that the monarch’s role had shifted from ruler to one of symbolic support for the kingdom’s people.
“I very much hope that this new medium will make my Christmas message more personal and direct,” she said from the country house’s Long Library. “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.”
History Rewind: Coronation of Elizabeth II, 1953
Alan Allport, a professor and historian at Syracuse University who specializes in the history of Britain in the period of the two world wars, says television was still a fairly new medium in 1957, with millions of people witnessing TV programming for the first time while watching the queen's coronation four years earlier.
King George V broadcasting to the empire on Christmas Day, Sandringham, 1935.
The first Christmas message from George V, ideated by BBC founder Sir John Reith and penned by poet Rudyard Kipling, reached 20 million listeners via BBC radio broadcast and received an extremely favorable response.
“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,” George V began his two-and-a-half-minute remarks.
George VI carried on the holiday tradition in 1937, as shown in the movie “The King’s Speech.” (Edward VIII, who abdicated the throne in less than a year, did not make a Christmas speech.) According to Royal.uk, the official website of the British royal family, there were no Christmas broadcasts in 1936 or 1938, but the outbreak of World War II prompted George VI to resume the tradition in 1939.
Since 1952, following her father’s death, Elizabeth delivered the message, something she continued to do every year except in 1969, when a printed version was circulated because a documentary on the royal family was scheduled during the holiday season.
Throughout her reign, the queen used the broadcasts to reflect on national, global and personal events, issues and concerns. Since 1960, the broadcasts, always aired at 3 p.m. in Great Britain, were pre-recorded so Commonwealth countries could run them at their preferred times.
Despite its reception, the 1957 speech, according to Allport, followed a 1953 controversy about whether Elizabeth’s coronation should be televised, with some of the queen's advisors regarding the idea as vulgar and intrusive.
“Elizabeth herself had insisted on the presence of TV cameras to allow her subjects an unprecedented glimpse of the service,” he says. “She felt a modern democratic nation and Commonwealth needed a more accessible monarch. The 1957 Christmas broadcast was an extension of that greater visibility.”
However, that visibility had its limits, adds Allport, whose most recent book is Britain at Bay: The Epic Story of the Second World War 1938-1941.
“The queen's children were not shown in the broadcast and would not appear for some years to come, despite popular demand to see them, as Elizabeth felt that was too great an intrusion into the family's private life,” he says.
Chart the unexpected rise and record-breaking reign of Queen Elizabeth II, which unfolded in the turbulent modern history of the English monarchy.
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Apr 9, 2016 · The Queen's 1957 Christmas Broadcast was an historic event, as it was the first to be televised. It was also the 25th anniversary of the first Christmas Broadcast on the radio. The broadcast was made live from the Long Library at Sandringham, Norfolk. Happy Christmas.
Dec 25, 2017 · Prior to 1957, it had been broadcast to the Commonwealth nations via radio, but that year, the Queen Elizabeth accepted the BBC’s request to read her remarks live on television from her...
The Queen's Christmas Broadcast, 1957. Queen Elizabeth II will deliver her 66th Christmas message to the nation on 25 December. The monarch first picked up the tradition commenced by her...
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