Thursday, December 25, 2008

Christmas Message

The Monarch’s Christmas Message to the Nation and to the Commonwealth has been a feature of the Festive Season ever since the days of George V. Using the wonders of radio and television, the words of Her Majesty the Queen are transmitted globally to millions of excited listeners, simultaneously. How different it is to the Bad Old Days before modern telecommunications technology. Back then, of course, royalty would have had to have visited each home individually for five minutes apiece, like Santa Claus. The logistics must have been horrendous, especially for those rulers without the benefit of teams of flying reindeers and elf assistants, leading to all sorts of problems.

Take, for example, the story related in Matthew’s Gospel. On Christmas Day in the Year Zero (post-turkey, most likely), Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus were settling down for the afternoon, expecting a single monarch to address them with the usual "My family and I" spiel. But unfortunately, no doubt due to some administrative cock-up, three turned up at once, and all of them wogs.

The trouble with monarchs is that they more or less take over your living room, especially if, like Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, they bring their camels, too. This is probably the real reason why the Holy Family decamped to a stable for the Holiday. In the same way, if our own Queen announced she was coming round here with her horse today at 3.00 pm, I'd no doubt remove myself to a stable, as well, just in case my carpet got covered in equine shit.

Poor Mary, Joseph and Jesus had to put up with these bastards doing their "As I look over the past 12 months and ahead to the coming year" bit in unison. Unlike nowadays, when you can turn this sort of stuff off or reduce the volume using an infra-red remote control, back then, they couldn't, and so everyone had to put up with the cacophony, unedited. And if that wasn’t enough, in the same afternoon, the neighbouring farm labourers came along, too, and brought their sheep.

No wonder the Boy turned out as He did.

Happy Christmas, anyway. Good Tidings to all Men, and all the rest of that crap.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Happy Xmas I'm glad I caught you.What the hell is "After shave balm"?Looks like milk or cream or summat I'd shoot over Christines bazonkas.Smells nice.High end gift,Armani.You rub it in after shaving?Use it/with instead of lotion?What the fuck?Two hours til drinks.Sigh.

Joe Slavko said...

I used to use Armani aftershave balm but gave up because it gave me a rash.

Anonymous said...

"An ephod for ten denarii?Thou art joking".