Caterina Boccalatte, 23, is enrolled in LLSM (Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures) and since March she has been editor-in-chief of UniBG OnAir (the university radio from UniBG).

She is a free spirit, an activist (working at Visionary, an NGO who aims to connect youth and institutions), a lover of art in all its forms and an apprentice interviewer (she collaborates with Bergamonews and attended the Holden School in Turin).

Happy Christmas.

Twenty-five years ago my grandfather broadcast the first of these Christmas messages. Today is another landmark because television has made it possible for many of you to see me in your homes on Christmas Day. My own family often gather round to watch television as they are this moment, and that is how I imagine you now.

I very much hope that this new medium will make my Christmas message more personal and direct.

There are homes ready to welcome us in every continent of the earth. Before I am much elder, I hope I shall come to know many of them. Although there is none of my father’s subjects, from the eldest to the youngest, whom I do not wish to greet, I am thinking especially today of all the young men and women who were born about the same time as myself and have grown up like me in the terrible and glorious years of the Second World War. Will you, the youth of the British family of nations, let me speak on my birthday as your representative? 

On my twenty-first birthday I welcome the opportunity to speak to all the peoples of the British Commonwealth and Empire, wherever they live, whatever race they come from, and whatever language they speak.

Let me begin by saying 'thank you' to all the thousands of kind people who have sent me messages of good will. This is a happy day for me; but it is also one that brings serious thoughts, thoughts of life looming ahead with all its challenges and with all its opportunity.