The Queen’s Christmas Broadcast 2017

The video above is the annual Christmas message to the Commonwealth from Her Majesty, the Queen of New Zealand (and other places). This one is better than others, opening with a look back and some of the Queen’s usual dry wit. It’s a nice video.

This year marks the 60th Anniversary of the first televised Christmas Broadcast (video below), also delivered by Queen Elizabeth. The messages began in 1937 as radio broadcasts, and the first was by King George V delivering a speech written by Rudyard Kipling and broadcast over the BBC’s Empire Service (now called World Service). The Queen is George V’s grand-daughter.

The messages are always broadcast on Christmas, which means that it can be seen in New Zealand before anywhere else in the Commonwealth, however, the YouTube version above wasn’t posted until today (which is, of course, Christmas Day in the UK). Once it’s posted, I can finally share it here, too.

And here’s the Queen’s first—and the first ever—televised Christmas Message:



Related:
The Queen’s Christmas Broadcast 2016
The Queen’s Christmas Broadcast 2015
Previous years’ broadcasts are no longer available.