Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are preparing for a sunny family Christmas in Montecito, California with their children Prince Archie, five, and Princess Lilibet, three.
While 2024 marks their fifth Christmas spent without Harry's family in the wake of their decision to step down as working royals, the Duke of Sussex is determined to uphold his family's long-held festive traditions.
Writing in his memoir Spare, Harry recalled the first year spent apart from his father King Charles and brother Prince William, who gathered at Sandringham with their grandmother Queen Elizabeth II.
Despite the novelty of his first Christmas spent without the pressures of being a senior royal, Harry was keen to uphold certain royal conventions.
"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," he wrote of Christmas 2020.
The royal family's rule about opening presents on December 24 is a nod to their Anglo-Saxon heritage, which Harry also explained elsewhere in Spare.
"The whole family gathered to open gifts on Christmas Eve, as always, a German tradition that survived the anglicizing of the family surname from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor," he wrote, recalling a particularly memorable Christmas with his family.
"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."
Harry and Meghan's Christmas plans
Christmas is a fun-filled celebration chez Sussex. Meghan recently revealed that the holiday season – which kicks off at Thanksgiving and concludes in the New Year – is her favourite time of year.
"I love the holidays," she shared in a November interview with Marie Claire. "Archie and Lilibet are now three and five, so every year it gets better."
She enthused: "At first, I think as a mom with children, you’re just enjoying having them there, but they're not understanding everything that's happening yet. But now we’re at the age where I just can't wait to see it through their lens every year."
Harry and Meghan make sure to follow all the same conventional traditions for their kids as they both experienced growing up, from leaving out "carrots for the reindeer" before Santa's visit to stockings full of presents and decorating the Christmas tree.
The Duke of Sussex previously revealed they got their very first Stateside Christmas tree from "a pop-up lot in Santa Barbara" and the couple have also been known to get a spruce delivered from Pines & Needles.
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There is also a musical element to their celebrations, which will include Meghan's mother Doria Ragland, who lives nearby.
"We're always making sure we have something fun to do. Like any other family you spend time having a great meal and then what do you do? Play games, all the same stuff, someone brings a guitar — fun," Meghan said.