Two Kings and two Christmas speeches 2022

🔊 Charles III spoke of love, religion, family, faith and everlasting light. Felipe VI sounded a royal red alert on division, deterioriation and erosion in Spain.

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In the notes after Christmas, we were talking about the way individual lives and groups slowly evolve over time into societies and nations and History.

Handily, two kings have broadcast their pre-prepared Christmas propaganda messages to their respective countries over the holidays, so we can see what each thought worthy of note and which concepts or events they wished to attempt to embed in their nation’s collective psyche. Between all the royal PR lines, perhaps we might even glimpse a hint of how each man sees his own role as head of state, as leader of all, in that place.

Felipe VI’s effort was more than twice as long as Charles III’s. The Spaniard waffled on for 1,400 words versus the Englishman’s tighter 600 words.

The most obvious thing to note is something that is glaringly present in King Charles’s message and glaringly absent in King Felipe’s: religion.

Charles’s words were full of faith, belief, Christ and the Church. Choirboys sang in a chapel. Images were edited in showing him physically inside the Chapel of the Manger in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem to reflect in silent reverence on the meaning of the silver star where Christians believe Jesus was born: “In the much-loved carol O Little Town Of Bethlehem”, he said: “we sing of how ‘in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light’”.

In Felipe’s message, the only reference to religion, faith, the Church or anything at all that might hint at something perhaps resembling Chrisitanity, and that from a very great distance, was one mention of the word “Christmas” in the last paragraph, as he said goodbye, and one reference to “Christmas Eve” at the start. The only mention of “belief” was a secular self-help “we must believe in ourselves”. We shall get to the why in a moment.

King Charles combined abundant religious references and the very foundational concept of Christianity—love—with Christmas, family, community and service for those British people contemplating eternal existence over mince pies on Christmas Day afternoon. King Felipe began with a 330-word festive lecture (half of Charles’s entire speech) on duty (“to keep fulfilling this tradition“), geopolitics, Ukraine, defence policy and European relations as Spaniards opened the wine over Chrismas Eve dinner.

“Faith in God” led to “faith in people”, said Charles about his “beloved mother, the late Queen”, who held a “belief in the power of that light” that he shared “with my whole heart”. That led him, conceptually and rhetorically, to comments praising the efforts of non-royal Britons in public service around the country in different circumstances: “the extraordinary ability of each person to touch, with goodness and compassion, the lives of others, and to shine a light in the world around them” at “this time of great anxiety and hardship”.

In Spain, King Felipe didn’t mention his own father, Juan Carlos, still banished to national oblivion in Abu Dhabi, at all and turned his lecture on Ukraine and European geopolitics into another, longer one on Constitutional law and foundational principles, via the main pessimistic themes of “division”, “the deterioration of wanting to live together” and “the erosion of institutions”. That didn’t sound either very festive or very positive from the Head of State. It was more like a royal red alert on how he sees Spanish politics.

“The first thing—and I say this again—is that we must have confidence in ourselves, as a nation”, he said. If the King himself, in his major TV message of the whole year, broadcast straight at millions of families as they sit down to Christmas dinner, and even if it’s only on in the background as everybody dives in to the prawns and lobster, says things like “a country or society divided or quarrelling does not advance, does not progress or resolve its problems, does not generate trust”, then the festive jelly is not the only thing that is wobbling.

If the King is shouting to the country that division and quarrelling are a danger, then the King must be observing those things, must believe they have national existential significance. If rickety institutions and warnings about a general threat to unity are the festive message this year, then the underlying state of Spain as a nation is very different from the underlying state of the UK as a nation. A British monarch, as well as benefiting from several centuries of unbroken tradition, is supposed to remain above or outside of politics. The modern Spanish monarch has only occupied his constitutional place for 44 years and regularly makes remarks that are relevant to national politics.

“The entire new scenario we are living through”, said King Felipe: “the war, the economic and social situation, the instability and tensions in international relations—are logically causing great worry and uncertainty in our society”. King Charles’s answer to the “time of great anxiety and hardship” was “the humanity of people throughout our nations and the Commonwealth who so readily respond to the plight of others”, which was also his only overt reference to the concept of “nation”.

The number of times Felipe VI expressed obligation seemed notable: “we must have confidence in ourselves, as a nation”, “must not be forgotten”, “that we must protect”, “we must have reasons to look towards the future with hope”, or “we must continue to share goals”. Obligation is not wish or will.

Both monarchs saw social problems but one was drawn towards a narrative of division, deterioriation and erosion and the other towards the shining light of the human spirit exemplified by love in a range of religious traditions among people in families and society at Christmas. The monarch as an exemplary representative figure of all-encompassing human values, far above mundane political or geopolitical squabbles, versus the monarch as the highest-level constitutional arbiter of a nation in which many politicians are intent on splintering it for personal or partisan gain.

It is implausible to imagine either royal speech in the other country: Felipe VI talking about religion, faiths, love, everlasting light and service or Charles III warning of the political risk of the division and erosion of the nation itself.

O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

(The carol O Little Town of Bethlehem, referenced by Charles III)

“I believe that, at this time, we should all be exercising responsibility and reflect in a constructive manner on the consequences that ignoring these risks can have for our union, our living together and our institutions. We cannot take everything we have built for granted. Nearly 45 years have passed since the approval of the Constitution and of course many things have changed and will continue to do so. But the spirit that gave birth to it, its principles and foundations, which are the work of all, cannot weaken and must not be forgotten.”

(Felipe VI)

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