Royal Christmas customs beloved of generations of sovereigns are facing the chop due to King Charles’ health crisis.
Prince William, and his wife, Kate Middleton, will put a heavy stamp on the royal Christmas this year, the Daily Beast has been told.
William and Kate are expected to host a “rival Christmas party” at their home on the Sandringham estate, Anmer Hall, with Kate’s family including her parents, Mike and Carole, in attendance. It will be notable for its studied informality.
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Friends of the royals say that the extended royal family who were invited to Sandringham last year—among them Prince Andrew and his family, including his ex-wife, Sarah “Fergie” Ferguson—are waiting to see how Charles’ health holds up in the coming months before making plans.
King Charles is expected to still be fighting cancer in December. He has been touring Australia and Samoa in recent days and has sought to maintain a light schedule; at one lunch held in his honor, for example, he only stayed for 10 minutes.
A friend of Andrew’s told The Daily Beast: “It will be a quieter Christmas than last year, but the question is, how quiet? Usually everyone would know what bits they are invited to by now. This year, it’s just wait and see.”
Some things never change, however, and sources say the bloodthirsty royal tradition of a pheasant and partridge shooting party on Boxing Day (the day after Christmas) will go ahead as usual, although Charles is expected to make at best a fleeting appearance, with the honor of leading the shoot falling to William instead. The traditional, full-family Christmas walk to church is planned to proceed as normal.
Slaughtering hundreds of birds for sport aside, the larger point is that the next generation of royals are on a mission to rebrand the royal Christmas, transforming it from a grand, dutiful and primarily religious occasion to one more aligned with their future subjects’ festive experiences. One source said this means there will be much more messaging this year from William and Kate’s camp of a “middle class flavor,” emphasizing eating chocolate, movie marathons, and generally sliding off the couch in a tryptophan haze like everyone else.
The source, a former courtier who worked with William and Kate, said they had been told the couple (neither of whom are especially religious) would take to social media over the holidays, sharing moments of their family Christmas.
“A little social media of the family eating chocolate and watching TV would be a very effective way of showing how normal Christmas is at Anmer Hall compared to what we hear about at Sandringham,” the source said.
Another out-of-touch habit that it is said to be high on Kate’s list of things to change is the royal custom of handing out presents on Christmas Eve, instead of giving gifts on Christmas Day as is usual in England. The Germanic tradition was established by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in deference to his Teutonic roots (side note: Albert also popularized the German tradition of a Christmas tree, which was almost unknown in England before Victoria’s reign).
Queen Elizabeth, a great admirer of Victoria, approved of the unusual gift-giving schedule, sources have previously told The Daily Beast, as she disliked extravagance and overt expressions of consumerism. She preferred Christmas Day to have a sacred note.
Practically, getting presents done in advance also made sense, as she always had a very busy day on Christmas Day; she would often attend church twice, wanted to walk the dogs, and would withdraw from all company for over an hour to watch her (pre-recorded) speech to the nation alone, and meditate upon it afterwards.
William and Kate have long been considered likely to scrap the custom of gift-giving on Christmas Eve, which they are acutely aware paints them as “weird” to the general public, when they ascend to the throne.
The tradition is expected to survive in some form this year, but it will be depleted; William and Kate will save their own and their children‘s gifts for Christmas Day at home, one friend said. (Officials at Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace did not respond to requests for comment about the royals’ Christmas plans.)
Prince Harry, in his memoir Spare, painted a remarkable portrait of family members being ushered into the ballroom at Sandringham where a long table covered in white table cloths would be set up with each person’s gifts stacked in a pile with a name card next to it.
He also illuminated another royal tradition that many commoners find inexplicable: giving each other cheap joke gifts instead of generous Christmas presents.
Even Harry was amazed on opening a “cold-blooded” gift from Princess Margaret to find it was a Biro pen. Harry wrote: “But it wasn’t just any Biro, she pointed out. It had a tiny rubber fish wrapped around it.”
A friend of William and Kate’s told The Daily Beast: “Kate has always found the presents on Christmas Eve thing weird. It is definitely going to be got rid of when they are officially running things. I imagine it will continue this year at Sandringham in some shape or form but everything is going to be much more relaxed and have a middle-class flavor at Anmer Hall. You can bet your bottom dollar they will be doing proper presents for each other and the kids there on Christmas Day.”
The Waleses have often not attended Christmas Day lunch at the “big house” at Sandringham, preferring the informality of a relaxed lunch at Anmer Hall, and they are unlikely to attend this year, especially if Queen Camilla again invites her son Tom Parker Bowles.
William doesn’t much like Camilla, despite having made peace with his father’s choices, and is made nervous by Tom’s somewhat louche lifestyle, sources have previously told the Daily Beast.
After an exceptionally difficult year, Kate and William would prefer to be surrounded by her family: her parents, Mike and Carole Middleton, who were featured sitting around the kitchen table at Anmer Hall in the video Kate released to announce she had beaten cancer, and her siblings James and Pippa and their partners, dogs and kids.
The friend said that William was “enthusiastic about embracing Kate‘s much more normal conception of Christmas,” adding, “It’s always been a slightly covert, rival Christmas party at their house, but it’s going to be much more obvious this year. If they post pictures, it’ll be an official coup attempt.”
A communications executive who previously worked with Kate and William told The Daily Beast: “William and Kate have made an incredibly successful brand out of being normal and boring, but the crazy royal customs at Christmas threaten all that. It’s particularly damaging to their reputation because Christmas is the one time that everybody in the whole country actually pays attention to the royals, and it risks getting overshadowed by stories about these strange, elitist, aristocratic habits. It’s not surprising they want to change the narrative as they prepare to take the throne themselves.”
