According to new reports from Fox News, the late Princess Diana was not at all a fan of spending Christmas with the rest of the royal family at Sandringham. In fact, a claim now being made by Ingrid Seward, the editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine and the author of “My Mother and I,” which is an exploration of the relationship King Charles shared with his late mother, Queen Elizabeth II, says she found one of their Christmas traditions horrifying.
“A friend of mine worked there at the time,” Seward said in an interview with Fox News Digital about the country estate where the royals often go to celebrate the holidays.
“Diana hated Sandringham,” Seward explained to the outlet. “Even when her romance with Charles was going well, she still didn’t like it… I think she found it claustrophobic because Diana was such a free spirit. She didn’t want to have to enjoy herself with so many rules. [But] they’re not rules. They’re just traditions of royalty.”
“There’s an order of precedence – who goes through the door first – and all kinds of things,” Seward explained. “It’s very archaic, and I think it made Diana feel uncomfortable.”
Diana never really fit well with the royal family as she was too much of a free spirit. However, her elegance, ability to have fun and enjoy herself, plus a natural charm endeared her to people all over the world. I remember always being enamored with her as a young man, believing her to essentially be the image of perfection in personality and beauty.
Vanity Fair recently revisited Andrew Morton’s 1992 bestseller, “Diana: Her True Story.” The late Princess of Wales secretly collaborated with the British journalist to share her struggles with royal life. Like Seward, Morton said Diana “hated” Christmas at Sandringham. He claimed her disdain for the tradition began at her first Christmas at the estate with the royals in 1981, five months after she married then-Prince Charles. By then, she was already pregnant with their first child, Prince William. According to Morton, Diana took the time “to buy her new family members thoughtful and expensive gifts” while she was suffering from morning sickness. Despite her efforts, Diana was “mortified” to discover that the royal family typically gave each other gag gifts – a memo that Charles forgot to give his wife.
For example, Diana gave her sister-in-law, Princess Anne, a really nice, costly cashmere sweater. What did she get in return? How about a toilet paper holder. Yikes. This, of course, wouldn’t have been as bad had she known that’s what they were doing as a tradition, but having no clue, I can imagine Diana probably felt insulted.
“It was highly fraught,” Diana said in a conversation with Morton. “I know I gave, but I can’t remember being a receiver. Isn’t that awful? I do all the presents, and Charles signs the cards. [It was] terrifying and so disappointing. No boisterous behavior, lots of tension, silly behavior, silly jokes that outsiders would find odd, but insiders understood.”
"*" indicates required fields
“I sure was [an outsider],” Diana clarified.
Seward said she wrote about that incident “years and years ago” before Diana confirmed it through Morton.
“My friend who worked there was looking after Diana,” recounted Seward. “They went off shopping and… bought beautiful cashmere sweaters, Floris soap and things like that… And she was absolutely mortified when she’d got these really beautiful presents… all sorts of very expensive, but small gifts, and she was given a bath hat or something.”
“She just couldn’t understand [it],” Seward went on to tell Fox. “To her, Christmas was all about spending a bit more than you could probably afford and getting really nice presents.”
British royal expert Hilary Fordwich previously told Fox News Digital that Diana’s attempt to win over her family with her gifts proved to be an “embarrassing and painful experience.”
“She wasn’t informed that the family exchanges are inexpensive and often joke gifts,” Fordwich said to the publication. “Diana went to great lengths to purchase extravagant cashmere sweaters and mohair scarves. Since gifts are opened up with everyone watching, the entire room collapsed into giggles, laughing at her, not with her.”
True Royalty TV co-founder Nick Bullen also previously told Fox News Digital that on Christmas Eve, the royals like to gather around to exchange wild and wacky presents.
“[The royals] do like to have fun,” Bullen explained. “The presents they give to each other are normally quite silly. If you’ve got all the greatest jewelry in the world, all the greatest works of art in the world, all the greatest clothes in the world, what do you give each other on Christmas? It tends to be small joke presents.”
Well, I guess he’s got sort of a point there. It’s literally a case of what do you get a person who already has everything?
“Do you know what a whoopee cushion is?” Bullen laughed as he told the story. “I’ve heard that they’ve been given in the past. I’ve heard that silly bath toys [were also] given in the past. Whether it’s true or not, I don’t know. But slightly rude, slightly funny, slightly on the edge presents are of the order of the day.”
“Queen Elizabeth II decreed early on that since the royal family is blessed with wealth and luxuries beyond imagining, presents exchanged should be gag gifts of the whoopee cushion variety,” added Christopher Andersen, author of “The King.”
“Charles’s favorite Christmas gift was an upholstered white leather toilet seat – a gift from his sister Princess Anne,” Andersen said. “He liked it so much that he still travels with it when he goes abroad.”