The Curious Way James Bond Spends Christmas

This sequence, it should be said, is recreated more or less faithfully in the 1969 film adaptation of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which leans into the holiday setting with an original Christmas song written by John Barry and Hal David. Yet even in one of the few Bond movies bold enough to end on a downer after Tracy is murdered on her wedding day, the film still glosses over the minute particulars that make the literary On Her Majesty’s Secret Service so revealing. Sure, a Christmas Eve chase across ski slopes is exciting… but what about the day after such shenanigans when the cold light of (Christmas) Day arrives like some ghost haunting Ebenezer Scrooge? That is where the book truly offers a window into Bond’s world… and perhaps Fleming’s as well.

A Very James Bond Christmas

While Fleming deliberately leaves vague what 007’s Christmas plans might have been if he wasn’t roped into infiltrating Blofeld’s winter sports stronghold, this omission might be the actual point. A character created to be a vicarious window into a world of high stakes espionage, glamour, and sex never needs to be home for Christmas… because when he is the reality is so much more telling.

Indeed, the chapters in question set on Christmas Day begin with Bond arriving from the airport out of Zürich, still reeling from his near-death experience and what might be construed as second thoughts about proposing marriage to Tracy earlier that morning (on the flight to London, he has a nightmare about attending a swanky aristocratic function with Tracy in top hat and tails). But that’s all spur of the moment excitement. Reality sets in once back at home where he has no one to see him home for Christmas, save for his secretary Mary Goodnight.

In the books, Miss Goodnight is far closer to what fans of the Bond movies might expect from Miss Moneypenny; she is Bond’s office confidant and flirting partner, and the one who reprimands 007 at the airport by saying, “As you’re wrecking so many other people’s Christmases, I thought I might as well throw mine on the slag-heap with the others.” Truthfully, she enjoys the distraction from lunch with her aunt, but the fact James can only condescend to her about not being home to stir the plum pudding (something she did weeks ago), reveals how little James knows about actual holiday life.

Afterward, Mary drives James to first his flat, where he is unaware if his beloved landlady is celebrating Christmas or not, and then to the office where a skeleton crew awaits his debriefing report. Finally, he is shuttled to no less than M’s home in the country, which is revealed to be a stately little Regency era house on the Crown Lands by Windsor Forest. Bond spends the drive brooding over whether M got a special deal from Her Majesty as head of the British Secret Service since 007 knows his boss only earns £5,000 a year, which even in 1963 couldn’t afford a home so near Windsor Castle.

Ultimately, these chapters offer a curious insight into the personal lives of Bond and his employer. The two are perhaps closer than the first several books suggest, with Bond being greeted with an “afternoon, James, Happy Christmas and all that,” by M. The master of spies is at the time in his study and leisure, working on what we are told is the “stock bachelor’s hobby” of painting watercolors of English wild orchids. We are reminded that M was a vice admiral in the Royal Navy before retiring for British Intelligence’s new, segregated role in the post-World War II era. But he still lives the life of a seaman, if regrettably by trees instead of water. His devoted former chief petty officer, a man named Hammond, even followed M into private life, working with his wife as the great man’s valet and chef, respectfully.