Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II has addressed her British subjects in her usual Christmas speech, broadcast on TV a few hours ago today.
You can watch it here:
The key word of Her Majesty’s speech is ‘Reconciliation‘, i.e. a peaceful end to a conflict. She remembers the Christmas of 1914, exactly a hundred years ago today, when German and British troops met in No Man’s Land. The German soldiers sang ‘Silent Night’ or more likely ‘Stille Nacht’ , a carol which has become a legacy of the Christmas truce of 1914.
Her Majesty then remembers the thousands of ceramic poppies that dotted, with their bright colours, the ground around the Tower of London last November.
Each red poppy is a soldier who died in WWI.
Reconciliation can be reached through sport, as it happened this summer in Glasgow with the Commonwealth Games, or through a state visit, like the one the Queen paid to Belfast in June, where she was seen on the set of Games of Thrones by the way.
Is that a puzzled look on Her Majesty’s face?
Reconciliation will also be needed to abridge the differences in Scotland between those who voted for independence in the recent referendum and those who were against it.
Merry Christmas