Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet have to follow an unusual royal Christmas rule which prevents them opening their present on Christmas Day. In his controversial memoir Spare, Prince Harry revealed how the children open their gifts on Christmas Eve, in a nod to the family’s Anglo-Saxon heritage.
Harry goes into detail about the Christmas tradition in the memoir. He wrote: "The whole family gathered to open gifts on Christmas Eve, as always, a German tradition that survived the anglicising of the family surname from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor. We were at Sandringham in a big room 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 US-based prince makes multiple references to Christmas traditions in his memoir, including his recollection of Christmas in 2020 before disaster struck his Montecito home.
He wrote: “It was Christmas Eve. We FaceTimed with several friends, including a few in Britain. We watched Archie running around the tree. And we opened presents. Keeping to the Windsor family tradition.
“One present was a little Christmas ornament of…the Queen! I roared. What the-? Meg had spotted it in a local store and thought I might like it. I held it to the light. It was Granny’s face to a T.
“I hung it on an eye-level branch. It made me happy to see her there. It made Meg and me smile. But then Archie, playing around the tree, jostled the stand, shook the tree, and Granny fell. Pieces lay all over the floor. I grabbed a dustpan and swept up the pieces.”
Whilst many of Harry’s memories are happy ones, the prince recalls receiving a strange gift from his aunt, Princess Margaret, who gave him a pen wrapped in a tiny rubber fish.
Remembering the strange present from the Queen’s sister, Harry recalled that he thought the gift was “cold blooded”.
Yet despite the strange nature of the Christmas gift, Harry reflected on the similarities of his life with his aunt, with both growing up as the younger sibling of the heir to be.
He said: "Now and then, as I grew older, it struck me that Aunt Margo and I should’ve been friends. We had so much in common. Two Spares. Her relationship with Granny wasn’t an exact dialogue of mine with Willy, but pretty close.
“The simmering rivalry, the intense competition…it all looked familiar. Aunt Margo also wasn’t that dissimilar from Mummy. Both rebels, both labelled as sirens. So, my first thought when I learned in early 2002 that she’d been taken ill was to wish there’d been more time to get to know her.”
