Tabla de contenidos para PEOPLE Christmas at the Palace en People

FROM THE TIME OF THE BBC’S 1922 founding, its first director hoped to deliver Christmas greetings from the King directly into people’s homes via a newly popular medium: radio. It would be 10 years before the then monarch, George V, agreed. On Dec. 25, 1932, subjects of the global British Empire heard the King, speaking into microphones set up at Sandringham, give a speech written by Rudyard Kipling that began, “I speak now from my home and from my heart to you all.” With that, a nearly unbroken annual ritual was born. The Christmas Day broadcast was carried on by George VI, by his daughter Elizabeth II and by King Charles III, who in his most recent 2023 speech from Buckingham Palace extolled the virtues of community service. “My…

WEEKS BEFORE CHRISTMAS in 2022 Netflix’s Harry & Meghan debuted, in which the Duke and Duchess of Sussex revealed ways they felt wronged by his family. Notably they said that palace sources had fed negative stories about them to the tabloids. In the New Year, Harry’s tell-all book Spare further widened the gulf between the couple and the royal family. Since then he has not been on speaking terms with his brother, nor did he spend meaningful time with William or Charles at the King’s May 2023 coronation. (Meghan stayed in Montecito, Calif., hosting a birthday party for their son Archie.) But amid the frank discussion of how they had come to be estranged, Meghan shared in the docuseries that she had left England with fond memories of the…

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‘Someone somewhere today will remark that Christmas is a time for children. It’s an engaging truth, but only half the story. Perhaps it’s truer to say that Christmas can speak to the child within us all. Adults, when weighed down with worries, sometimes fail to see the joy in simple things, where children do not.… We have the chance to reminisce and see anew the wonder of the festive season through the eyes of our young children.… They teach us all a lesson—just as the Christmas story does that in the birth of a child, there is a new dawn with endless potential’—QUEEN ELIZABETH II, IN HER FINAL CHRISTMAS DAY ADDRESS, 2021…

SHE ISN’T THE FIRST MUSICAL ROYAL. Henry VIII composed folk songs in the 16th century that are still played today. His daughters Mary Tudor and Elizabeth I learned harpsichord and lute. But not since Princess Diana danced in a 1985 duet to “Uptown Girl” had a performance so captivated royal watchers. While hosting a 2021 holiday concert in Westminster Abbey, Princess Kate sat at the piano and played “For Those Who Can’t Be Here” before more than 1,200 guests, including health care workers whom she and Prince William had met during the COVID-19 pandemic. William beamed as his wife’s fingers lightly touched the keys while accompanying Scottish singer Tom Walker. “I thought she absolutely smashed the performance,” said Walker of Kate, who started taking music lessons at age 11. “It’s…

BY ORDER OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR, who assumed the English throne following the Norman invasion of 1066, construction on Windsor Castle began in 1070. Building it back then took 16 years. Today, just the planning process of decorating the palace for the holidays still needs a full 11 months. Weeks after the last garlands are taken down, the decor team starts thinking about the coming year’s theme. In 2019 a velvet-and-gold Victorian motif honored the 200th anniversary of the births of Victoria and Albert. The 2023 display again delighted the thousands of seasonal visitors who tour the public rooms of the palace, which is still in use as a residence. (Services at Windsor’s St. George’s Chapel were also open to all.) The idea of decorating a tree indoors is believed…

FRONT COVER Courtesy Kensington Palace/Getty Images; (top row, from left) Samir Hussein/Getty Images; Mark Stewart/Camera Press/Redux; Karwai Tang/WireImage; Mark Cuthbert/UK Press/Getty Images; (bottom) Alamy TITLE PAGE/CONTENTS 1 Jack Taylor/Getty Images; 2-3 Stephen Pond/Getty Images CHRISTMAS IS FOR KIDS 4-5 Samir Hussein/Getty Images; 6 (from top) Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images; Historia/Shutterstock; 7 Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images; 8-9 Lisa Sheridan/Studio Lisa/Getty Images(4); 10 (from top) PA Images/Getty Images; Dennis Lee Royle/AP Photo; 11 Dave Thompson/PA Images/AP Photo; 12-13 PA Images/Getty Images; 14 (from top) Georges De Keerle/Getty Images; PA Images/Getty Images; 15 Martin Keene/PA Images/Getty Images; 16 Richard Young/Shutterstock; 17 Fiona Hanson/AP Photo; 18-19 (clockwise from left) Andrew Matthews/Getty Images(2); Samir Hussein/Getty Images(2); 20 (from top) Chris Jackson/Getty Images; Tim Graham Picture Library/Getty Images; 21 (from top) Alastair Grant/AFP/Getty Images; Kin…

AS KING CHARLES LOOKS TOWARD his third Christmas on the throne, he and Queen Camilla will assume one of their happiest duties: presiding over royal holiday festivities. This year we can expect a celebration much like Christmases past, with the sprawling family assembled at Sandringham House, on their 20,000-acre country estate in Norfolk. Once again the Windsors are expected to sit down for a black-tie Christmas Eve dinner, exchange inexpensive gag gifts laid out on trestle tables and tuck into a turkey lunch with all the trimmings—after greeting the public on the morning walk to services at St. Mary Magdalene Church. “People travel for miles to go to Sandringham to see them,” Dickie Arbiter, Elizabeth II’s former press secretary and author of On Duty With the Queen, told People. “And…

FOR BRITISH ROYALS, CHRISTMAS is a command performance. Princess Diana, who grew up in Norfolk on the Sandringham estate and was baptized at its St. Mary Magdalene Church, understood this even before she married into the Windsor clan at age 20. Beginning in 1981 she would spend nearly every holiday with her husband’s family—including some after she and Charles split in 1992, for this was the only way to have Christmas Day with her sons William and Harry. Queen Elizabeth had called Sandringham, where the family has celebrated since 1988, “an escape.” But for Diana it was a prison. Chef Darren McGrady, who worked for the princess, told the New York Post in 2021 that he once saw her walking the grounds at Christmastime wearing headphones. “I asked her what…

CHEF DARREN MCGRADY SPENT 15 years cooking for the Windsors beginning in 1982, when his early duties included preparing meals for Queen Elizabeth II’s corgis (diced meat with cabbage and rice). He soon graduated to handling feasts for the family and guests before moving to Kensington Palace as chef for Princess Diana and her sons. In that time, he says, the royals stuck to the classics, especially when it came to yuletide food. Christmas Eve meant a formal dinner at 8:30—men in black tie, and floor-length gowns for the ladies. McGrady and his staff would lay out “something festive, some game, like pheasant or venison, and roasted wintry vegetables, like parsnips.” The next morning, full English breakfast—bacon, sausage, kippers and kidneys, with an option of fruit and boiled eggs (which…