Kate Middleton scraps major royal Christmas tradition

Kate Middleton and Prince William are believed to have made a surprising move that’s set to spark a major shake-up over Christmas.

It was the Christmas pickle of all time.

It was 2010, and the first royal fiancée on deck since New Labour was en route to celebrate with her future in-laws. What could Kate Middleton buy as a pressie for the Queen of Great Britain, a woman who legally owned an entire nation’s seabed, had her own navy and could have cannons fired in central London parks on a lark?

So she made chutney. A jar of the homemade stuff. Maximum cost about $6.40.

Sixteen years on and Kate, now the Princess of Wales and well on her way to being common-law beatified, is still shaking up the Windsors’ Christmases with all the vigour Princess Margaret left in charge of apero hour. At lunchtime on December 25 this year, they will be nowhere near King Charles and doing their own thing.

Edward, Duke of Edinburgh, Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, William, Prince of Wales and Catherine, Princess of Wales arrive ahead the state banquet for the German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his wife Elke Budenbender on Wednesday. Picture: Getty.

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Never fear, having been very good all year, we, the punters, will still get our annual walk-to-church treat. There’s nothing like watching the parading, progressing royal family done up like proverbial, hatted dinners, small children in wee suits and on best behaviour on pain of Xboxes being confiscated, on their enforced march to the annual 11am church service at St Mary Magdalene on the Sandringham Estate.

However, after an hour of Ding Dong Merrily On High-ing and accepting only slightly bent boxes of Roses chocolates from waiting, masochistic monarchists penned in behind rope lines, things will swerve from the bog standard, usual Windsor Christmas.

The Waleses, for the third year in a row, will not then make their way to the Big House, as it’s known, to scoff roasties and all the trimmings, but will head to their own home, Anmer Hall, according to The Royalist’s Tom Sykes. Come lunchtime on December 25, King Charles will sit down to tuck into his lunch with neither of sons anywhere within sprout-lobbing distance of him.

This is hardly the picture of a unified, happy family now is it?

According to Sykes, the Waleses’ decision to dodge the official royal lunch comes after “long-simmering tensions between the monarch and his heir were made worse by the palace’s shambolic handling of the Prince Andrew affair.”

Kate’s Christmas is set to be an intimate affair with just her very close family. Picture: Getty.

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A source told The Royalist: “William and the family will do their duty and go to church with big smiles pasted on, but they are not expected for Christmas lunch at the big house. It has been an extremely difficult year for William and Catherine”.

According to Sykes, a contributing factor for “the deep personal rift between father and son…has been exacerbated by Charles’ determination to continue to include Andrew’s children, Beatrice and Eugenie, in formal royal events.” This includes them reportedly being invited to spend the holidays at Sandringham.

However, a friend of Charles “angrily denied” to The Royalist that the Waleses skipping lunch “represented a rift”, saying, “of course he is free to do his own thing without anyone being remotely upset.”

Sure Jan.

Whether the King is quite the cool, sanguine cucumber about William choosing to Christmas with, possibly, the Middleton mere and pere over his own flesh-and-blood sire, what is clear is that the royal Christmases of yore, when Queen Elizabeth still presided over things, are looking like a thing of the past.

They used to, not that long ago, seem like big, convivial affairs involving dozens and dozens of guests and so many rellies that at least one duke probably ended up eating his plum pud seated at a tacked-on card table.

Rifts have been caused in the family, not only by Meghan Markle and Prince Harry but more recently by Prince Andrew. Picture: Getty.

Take in 2017 when Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip hosted nearly 30 guests at Sandringham, Prince Harry and another royal fiancée, Meghan Markle, along with a trio of Yorks, Princess Anne’s son Peter and his wife Autumn Phillips and their daughters and Sarah Chatto, Princess Margaret’s daughter, her artist husband Daniel and their two sons, amongst others. Photos from that year’s walk-to-church now seem like a quaint sepia-toned relic - in those days, there were no out-and-out pariahs, or Oprah-ing, and no one at the FBI had written to then Prince Andrew to wonder if he might fancy a bit of a chat. (In January 2020, it was revealed that the FBI had been trying to speak to the then Duke of York for months about his links with Jeffrey Epstein.)

A few days later, on December 28, 2017, Harry guest edited Radio 4’s Today program and enthused about how Meghan had had a “fantastic” time getting to know her soon-to-be in-laws and that they were “the family, I suppose, that she’s never had”.

Well, that’s aged well, hasn’t it?

Still, that big, lovely, jubbly Christmas of cousins and dogs and children and Prince Edward forced to sleep on the fold-out is a thing of the past.

What William and Kate’s dodging of spending the day with the King lays sadly bare is just how hollowed out and fractured the Windsors are after the last few years.

The Sussexes are off in California trimming a recyclable tree and wondering when Netflix might call them back; Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has already gotten his well-deserved lump of coal with even more of the grubby stuff to come with the US Congress breathing down his neck; Sarah Ferguson has had her last gravy-drenched slab of Sandringham goose washed down with buckets of Pouilly-Fumé, and Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie’s regular beetling off to the Middle East on business trips is reportedly making inquiring minds wonder how far certain HRH apples might fall from the cash grabby tree.

Charles’ relationship with William is believed to have fractured in recent months. Picture: Getty.

For Charles, it’s all just a bit sad. On the personal front, neither of his children wants to ring in Chrissie with him, his brother is a leprous public figure reduced to being a bargain bin ‘Mr’, and January will be the second anniversary of his cancer diagnosis.

And professionally, on His Majesty’s watch, the working ranks of Crown Inc have been reduced to Edward, a prince with the name and face recognition of a backbencher from the Wigan; Anne, a sister staunchly taking her 100 percent polyester pantsuits off to sternly shake hands in podiatry wards and lifeboat stations; and William and Kate, a son and daughter-in-law who have made it clear they are done obediently unveiling plaques and meekly toeing all palace lines.

Aside from Charles’ siblings, how many of his family will be on hand to help him carve the bird on Christmas Day? No need to bring the folding card table down from the attic, kept alongside that strangely ageing portrait of Anne.

The big winners here are Michael and Carole Middleton, you’d have to think, who could be in for another year of pulling crackers and arguing over the tin of Quality Street with not one but two future Kings.

For His Majesty, so much for peace on Earth and goodwill towards all men.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.

Originally published as Kate Middleton scraps major royal Christmas tradition