What the royals are doing for Christmas

The royal family have revealed their plans for Christmas Day as they prepare for their first festive season without the late Queen.

The announcement from Buckingham Palace came “just minutes” after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex unveiled a trailer for another Netflix show they have in the works, less than a week after debuting their “bombshell docuseries” Harry & Meghan, said The Mirror.

As a turbulent year for the royals draws to a close, the paper predicted that this year’s festive season will be an “emotional occasion” for the family, “who are still mourning the loss of their mother, grandmother and great-grandmother”.

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Return to Sandringham

Buckingham Palace has confirmed that King Charles, Queen Consort Camilla and other senior royals will celebrate Christmas at Sandringham for the first time in three years.

The decision marks a return to royal tradition, after Queen Elizabeth spent the festive season at Windsor Castle during the pandemic.

Royal Christmases at the Norfolk estate usually include a “morning visit to St Mary Magdalene Church”, said Yahoo! News, followed by a “family lunch and a gathering round the television to watch the monarch’s televised address to Britain”.

Charles will be giving his first King’s speech, “and he's likely to pay tribute to his late mother with his words”, said The Mirror.

Prince Louis is also set for a “starring role” in the celebrations, “after stealing the show at the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee”, according to the paper’s Lucy Thornton. The four-year-old prince will reportedly join the family’s traditional Christmas Day walk to church for the first time, amid hopes that he can “give proceedings a lift” – although a “final decision” about the “important Sandringham milestone” will not be made until the big day, Thornton added.

Scaled-back plans

Experts have predicted that the royals’s “much-loved Christmas traditions” will be “scaled back” this year, said Cosmopolitan, and will centre around a “low-key Christmas lunch”.

Former BBC royal commentator Jennie Bond told OK! magazine that without “the linchpin of the Queen holding together an often fractured family, they may suddenly decide to do their own thing”.

The King’s Christmas plans “might be up in the air a bit”, she added, and “the younger royals will probably want to spend time with their own families”, so “two- or three-day celebrations” may be “a thing of the past”.

Frozen out?

According to The Sun’s royal editor Matt Wilkinson, the Sussexes are being “frozen out” of Charles’s first Christmas dinner at Sandringham as monarch. The King and Camilla have “invited large numbers of those dubbed ‘The Loyal Family’”, said Wilkinson.

The guest list is expected to include Camilla’s children, Tom Parker Bowles and Laura Lopes; the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and their three children; Prince Edward and his family; and princesses Beatrice and Eugenie plus their husbands and children.

But Harry and Meghan are expected to spend Christmas in California with their children Archie, three, and Lilibet, 18 months, although “it is believed they will share presents with William and Kate”, said Wilkinson.

Prince Andrew ‘masterstroke’

The King’s Christmas guest list is also expected to include Prince Andrew. His ex-wife Sarah Ferguson has reportedly been invited to join the royals for Christmas too, for the first time in 30 years.

A Sandringham source told The Mirror’s royal features writer Jennifer Newton that the former couple would be staying at Wood Farm, a five-bedroom cottage set away from the main house on the 20,000-acre estate.

Royal biographer Ingrid Seward said the decision to allow the disgraced prince and his ex to attend while keeping them “tucked out of sight” was a “masterstroke”.

Charles is “not an unkind person”, Seward told the paper. “There were many times Camilla had to hide away like a fugitive so he understands Andrew’s situation only too well.”.

But the King cannot risk his image “being tarnished by Andrew”, she added, and “he will not allow it to happen”.