The British news and espionage service doesn’t pretend to long for world peace with its digital Christmas card – it has an important message for children and young people.
Just like the company Christmas or the scrap gnomes, the Advent card is one of the great mysteries of the run-up to Christmas. Such customs are often cultivated by people who otherwise strictly reject anything religious. The company Christmas, for example, conjures up a (forced) community that could no longer exist tomorrow. Schrottwichteln only transports the garbage production and Christmas cards are now mostly standardized, automated and digitized. They are seldom very personal.
The British espionage service GCHQ has just published its Christmas card online. And, how beneficial, at least here, where Alan Turing once cracked the Nazis’ Enigma code, you don’t even pretend to be particularly warm. The GCHQ’s Advent greeting addressed to children and young people – it mainly consists of puzzles. Things like, “What comes after GRYFFINDOR, UFFLEPUF, and VENCL?” On what?
The GCHQ puzzles are so difficult to solve for people who are already suffering from the general math, computer science, natural science and technology madness, MINT for short, that it immediately becomes clear: With GRYFFINDOR and UFFLEPUF, probably also with GCHQ and VENCL, it’s not about ox and donkey, about Mary and Joseph, about world peace or divine light. It’s all about acquiring new, dynamic spies. Because never have cryptanalysts, decipherers and cyberattackers been more in demand than in the age of digital junk gnomes. In this sense: FRHS FST.
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