My Merry Little Monarch Christmas

Q: What do you get if you cross a sheep­dog with a jel­ly?
A: The col­lie-wob­bles.
~my favorite British Christmas crack­er joke

Our sto­ry is set in Jolly Old England, December 1992, the year I was study­ing with a small gag­gle of stu­dents from Centre College. If I had learned any­thing about England in my time there, it was that the Britons have a tru­ly com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship with their monar­chy. Andrew Morton’s best­seller Diana: Her True Story was released that year. Seemingly every­one was read­ing and dis­cussing the blis­ter­ing tell-all of her mar­riage to Prince Charles, Charles’s rela­tion­ship with Camilla Parker Bowles, and Diana’s own men­tal health strug­gles, includ­ing depres­sion and anorexia. 

Earlier that year, Princess Anne had got­ten a much-pub­li­cized and crit­i­cized divorce. Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, had recent­ly sep­a­rat­ed from Prince Andrew. A few weeks ear­li­er, a fire dev­as­tat­ed Windsor Castle, one of Queen Elizabeth’s offi­cial res­i­dences. Everywhere we went, the talk would even­tu­al­ly wound around to the monar­chy and if the coun­try would be bet­ter served by demol­ish­ing it. The bat­tle cry Citizens, Not Subjects! was spray paint­ed on end­less tube sta­tion walls. And yet, based on the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the tabloids, even those scream­ing for a democ­ra­cy were equal­ly obsessed with the scan­dalous lives of the royals. 

Our col­lege was quite close to Buckingham Palace, and we saw Princess Diana on the street sev­er­al times, walk­ing with her boys and body­guards. We fre­quent­ly bat­tled the nev­er-end­ing crowds to watch the Changing of the Guard and once even glimpsed “The Big E” her­self wav­ing as her car left the gates. 

On December 9, I went to Harrods to buy Christmas crack­ers for the Centre hol­i­day par­ty, a farewell before we all head­ed back to the states the fol­low­ing week. A Christmas crack­er is a card­board paper tube, wrapped in bright­ly col­ored paper and twist­ed at both ends. There is a banger inside the crack­er, two strips of chem­i­cal­ly impreg­nat­ed paper that react with fric­tion so that when the crack­er is pulled apart, the crack­er makes a bang. Inside are paper hats to wear, small gifts, and a joke (tra­di­tion­al crack­er jokes are über-British and we nev­er under­stood any of them).

I was wait­ing in line to pay when the hol­i­day music was abrupt­ly shut off, replaced by an alarm­ing siren blare. What the hell? I noticed the crowds lurch­ing toward the wall of tele­vi­sions for sale in the elec­tron­ics depart­ment, and fol­lowed the lem­mings. It grew cot­ton qui­et, and the secu­ri­ty guard turned the vol­ume all the way up on one screen after another. 

The break­ing news was the offi­cial announce­ment by Prime Minister John Major to the House of Commons that the Prince and Princess of Wales were sep­a­rat­ing. I was star­tled to see peo­ple start qui­et­ly cry­ing as they absorbed the news. Everyone seemed odd­ly stunned, despite months of intense spec­u­la­tion by the tabloids that Charles was liv­ing a sep­a­rate life with Camilla. Eventually, the hol­i­day music resumed and peo­ple wan­dered back to shop, snif­fling and sad. There was a cul­tur­al dis­con­nect. I too felt sad for the dis­so­lu­tion of any mar­riage, yet these peo­ple — def­i­nite­ly sub­jects and not cit­i­zens, at that moment at least — were act­ing as if their clos­est friends had died. 

That night, our group cel­e­brat­ed with Chinese take­away and cheap wine. We stole a rub­ber plant from the lob­by and dec­o­rat­ed it with a sad string of lights and the gifts from our crack­ers. Someone turned on the radio, and Judy Garland’s ver­sion of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas from the movie Meet Me in St. Louis came through the tin­ny speakers. 

And I looked around at us in our stu­pid paper crowns and start­ed bawl­ing. I was tired of it. All of it. I was tired of take­away and Paddington Bear and the tube and Picadilly Circus and Cliff Richard and peo­ple wish­ing us a hap­py Christmas instead of a mer­ry one (Queen Elizabeth had decid­ed years before that the word “mer­ry” was used by the low­er class and offi­cial­ly adopt­ed the term hap­py Christmas instead). 

I want­ed to go home. 

To this day, I grow misty any­time I hear any ver­sion of  Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. So I decid­ed I would learn to play and sing this one for the hol­i­day sea­son, bring­ing my fam­i­ly and friends to nos­tal­gic tears as I strummed my gui­tar and chan­neled my inner Judy.

And this is how I came to learn Up on the Housetop. Which turned out to be a far bet­ter song, though it took me a while to get there. Check back next week to learn why.