Royal | News - Prince Ricardo De La Cerda
Every year, the royals spend their Christmas at Sandringham, a tradition that has been in the family for generations.
Among their Christmas traditions is the exchange of joke presents, handed to one another on Christmas Eve, with reported gifts including a leather toilet seat, a “grow your own girlfriend kit”, and a spoon with the words “cereal killer” engraved on it.
But the hilarious gift exchanges aren’t anything new to the royals.
Former royal butler Paul Burrell revealed the “rude” stocking fillers the late Princess Diana would buy for her sons, Prince William and Prince Harry.
Princess Diana would spend Christmas with her butler and two sons the weekend before so they could be with the rest of the royal family on the actual day, the ex-royal butler revealed.
He said: “We had a fun Christmas, but we always had it the weekend before with Harry and William. She knew they had to be with their father on Christmas Day and with their cousins and the Queen. Eventually, when she didn’t go to spend Christmas with the royal family, she would have the weekend before with William and Harry.”
Paul Burrell recalled making stockings with the late Princess for the brothers, sharing that he would be “stockpiling things” while they were at school, tucking them away in Princess Diana’s Christmas stocking.
He added: “The three of them would disappear into the sitting room and you could hear the squeals and laughter coming out. Of course, Diana was very jokey and she would put rude things in there too to embarrass them.
“William had a calendar one year with naked ladies on it just to make him blush and it worked. Lovely things like that happened, and they would have their Christmas.”
While the Christmas spent between a mother and her two sons sounded very wholesome, the former butler also recalled how the late Princess had “very sad Christmases”.
He revealed that she “couldn’t stand” Christmas at Sandringham, but when she stopped spending the days with the royal family, her Christmases were spent alone, as she would send Paul away saying, “I’ll be fine, it’s only one day of the year.”