King Charles III is now the patriarch of the Windsor family’s festive traditions, and following in his mother’s footsteps will be hosting Christmas with Queen Camilla at Sandringham House in Norfolk this year.
It will be their third since Queen Elizabeth II died and although so much has changed, those time honoured rituals hold firm.
Over the holiday period the Royal family gathers on Christmas Eve, each laying out their presents on trestle tables as they arrive.
Final decorations are added by the children to the country house’s impressive six-metre Christmas tree and gifts are then exchanged in a flurry of excitement at teatime.
In his memoir, Spare, Prince Harry described the royal evening as one of the most fun nights of the royal calendar with “a long table covered with white cloth and white name cards. By custom, at the start of the night, each of us located our place, stood before our mound of presents.
“Then suddenly, everyone began opening at the same time. A free-for-all, with scores of family members talking at once and pulling at bows and tearing at wrapping paper.”
The gifts themselves have been famously comical. In his bachelor days before he met Meghan Markle, Harry was given a “Grow Your Own Girlfriend” gift by his sister-in-law, Catherine, as an in-joke.
While back in the day, Princess Anne reportedly gave her brother Charles a leather toilet seat!
On Christmas Day the public gets the chance to meet and greet the family on their walk to and from the 16th century St Mary Magdalene church on the Sandringham estate, where King George VI and Diana, Princess of Wales, were both baptised.
This pretty parish church was a favourite with the late Queen, especially for the Christmas morning service.
Afterwards, the family heads back to the house for Christmas lunch.
The menu has typically included traditional turkey with roast potatoes and all the trimmings, but with the King’s passion for organic produce and lighter meals, there will likely be more contemporary alternatives also served today.
With both the King and the Princess of Wales undergoing cancer treatment, 2024 has been a challenging year.
The comfort of a family get-together, when the royal youngsters take centre stage and Christmas frivolity unfolds, will no doubt be much welcomed.
There is no word yet on whether Harry and Meghan and their two children – Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet – will fly in from their home in the US, but if there is ever to be a chance of a healing family reunion following the rift of the past few years, surely this would be the perfect occasion – the season of goodwill.
Christmas is a time when the Royal family comes into its own, a beacon for the nation to focus on.
Their messages of unity, kindness and peace are currently all the more pertinent with horrific conflicts raging in the Middle East and Ukraine.
As a child growing up in England, all our gift opening paused for the Queen’s speech.
It was a tradition replicated in homes around the nation, a moment to assess the challenges of the year and focus on core national values.
King George V pioneered the Christmas message in 1932 with a radio address to the Empire and Commonwealth, a chance for the sovereign to connect personally with his people in all corners of the world.
An estimated 20 million tuned in to the BBC broadcast from countries including Australia.
In times of global or national unrest this carefully crafted regal communication provided leadership and reassurance.
During WWII, King George VI lifted spirits and supported troops with his heartfelt Christmas broadcasts.
His daughter, Queen Elizabeth II, enhanced the tradition, making history when she delivered the very first televised speech in 1957.
“Television has made it possible for many of you to see me in your homes on Christmas Day. My own family often gathers round to watch television, as they are at this moment, and that is how I imagine you now,” said the glamorous, smiling queen, then a 31-year-old mother-of-two.
Some courtiers feared this glimpse behind the scenes of royal life might destroy the mystique of monarchy, pulling back the curtain too far, but it was Queen Elizabeth who insisted on bringing TV cameras behind palace gates in a bid to modernise the rather stuffy image of the monarchy.
Dressed in a festive gold brocade party dress with full skirt and sitting at her writing desk in Sandringham House, Her Majesty was surrounded by family photos, the very image of typical family life, albeit in the grandeur of a stately home.
“I very much hope that this new medium will make my Christmas message more personal and direct,” she said in the live broadcast.
“It is inevitable that I should seem a rather remote figure to many of you. A successor to the Kings and Queens of history; someone whose face may be familiar in newspapers and films but who never really touches your personal lives. But now at least for a few minutes I welcome you to the peace of my own home.”
This set the tone for Her Majesty’s Christmas messages over the next six-and-a-half decades and undoubtedly increased her popularity.
She wasn’t the first Queen to create Christmas traditions; Queen Victoria and Prince Albert are often cited as the architects of many of the rituals we still follow today.
The concept of decorating a Christmas tree was introduced to the British Royal Court by Victoria’s Hanoverian ancestors, but it was Albert who amplified the custom and introduced the evergreen fir as the Christmas tree of choice.
Victoria and Albert’s childish delight in the festivities of Christmas soon spread, with richly decorated trees popping up throughout Britain and the Commonwealth in private homes and out in the community.
The Victorian Christmas – still depicted on chocolate boxes and in department store windows – was born.
After their marriage in 1840, Albert became chief tree-decorator at Windsor Castle, a ritual which in years to come involved their growing band of children and today is continued by the Royal family in their homes and palaces.
The Prince introduced wax candles, which he fixed to the tree, and hung its branches with boiled sugar candies and sugar plums.
Victoria’s effervescent excitement of all things Christmas is captured in her personal diary from Christmas Eve in 1841.
She was then just 21 and a young mother.
“Christmas, I always look upon as a most dear happy time, also for Albert, who enjoyed it naturally still more in his happy [childhood] home,” Victoria writes.
“It is a pleasure to have this blessed festival associated with one’s happiest days. The very smell of the Christmas Trees of pleasant memories. To think, we have already two children now, and one who already enjoys the sight – it seems like a dream.”
As Duchess of Cornwall, Camilla established her own tree tradition which she continues as Queen, inviting children helped by charities she supports to decorate the Christmas tree at Clarence House – Charles and Camilla’s home in London.
The children meet Father Christmas and in recent years have also seen real live reindeer in the Clarence House gardens, with festive music provided by a military band.
In years gone by the royal children have also been involved in a public way.
In 2019, a cute six-year-old Prince George joined in preparations for Christmas when he was filmed helping to stir a Christmas pudding mixture.
In truth, the photographs and a video, which later surfaced, were a stylised piece of theatre showing a 93-year-old Queen Elizabeth with her three heirs – Charles, William and George – designed to deliver a message of stability.
But they also showed a sweet image of royal Christmas with much laughter on display.
The most recent addition to royal tradition is George’s mother’s beautiful Christmas carol concert.
This year, spearheading the Princess of Wales’s return to royal duties, the concert was top of her agenda, a signpost on her long road of healing following preventative chemotherapy treatment.
