For the British royal family, the tradition since 1988 has been for the Queen to gather with her family at Sandringham and on Christmas Day, they all walk to church together. That will not be happening this year because of COVID and it’s now been confirmed that Her Majesty and Prince Philip will spend Christmas at Windsor Castle. 

 

Sandringham is for the inner royal circle. For the wider circle, there’s the Queen’s annual Christmas lunch and that happens at Buckingham Palace for a bigger crowd which is currently non-COVID compliant. Considering that OfMichael was recently diagnosed with coronavirus, and she’s usually one of the attendees at the Queen’s Christmas lunch (that’s where she wore her racist brooch), probably not a good idea to go ahead with that tradition either. 

Speaking of Christmas, PEOPLE had an exclusive today about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Christmas tree. Last year, the Sussexes spent Christmas on Vancouver Island. Rewind to this time in 2019, early December, Harry and Meghan were off the grid for a while and the UK tabloids were assuming, inaccurately as usual, that they were in Los Angeles. It only emerged just before Christmas, on December 20, 2019, that they were actually in Canada and had been for a while. 

That was the beginning of the end, at least publicly. The fact that they were in Canada was the moment everything turned, as it was clear they had no interest in spending Christmas at Sandringham with the other royals – and as it was unknown when they would return. And we all know the rest after that.

 

The Sussexes now own a home in Montecito and yesterday they went to pick out their first Christmas tree. No photos, obviously, but a civilian posted about it on social media which is how PEOPLE got hold of the story. And it’s probably a pretty special time, being in a permanent place together, as a family, after the uncertainty they were probably feeling last year at Christmas what with the imminent decision to step down as senior royals. 

Not that sh-t has been any more certain in many ways in 2020 with this wretched pandemic but still, the Sussexes have settled on a few key elements, like their home and also their deal with Netflix. Oh, right. Speaking of Netflix…

There’s been weeks of fuss over The Crown, and all kinds of whinging about how unfair it is to the Queen and to Prince Charles and the rest of them, with calls for a disclaimer to make sure people know it’s a drama. Did you see this tweet?

 

LOL, I f-cking love Netflix’s social media managers. They’re so good at shade. And this is exactly what I posted about the other day when I said that the Netflix algorithm is offering up the documentary Diana: In Her Own Words alongside The Crown. Because if you haven’t seen it… 

Well, a lot of what’s in The Crown is from what Diana said herself. She secretly recorded herself talking about her life and her experience as a royal for Andrew Morton’s book. So while, for sure, certain parts of The Crown are indeed fictionalised, Netflix is giving you the option to compare and contrast what you see on The Crown and what Diana said herself. And the cheeky people at Netflix specifically chose this particular scene, narrated by Diana, about how Charles and Camilla were still messing around just before the wedding. And she talked about her lunch with Camilla and how she found the bracelets that Charles had made for both him and Camilla before the wedding. That’s just a two and a half minute preview of what ends up being almost two hours of just Diana talking about how badly she’d been treated, how she was ignored, neglected, punished, and cast aside. 

But still, even if The Crown is complete bullsh-t, up and down a fantasy narrative, well, did you see the piece in The Economist? It’s a good read but if you can’t get full access, this pull quote says it all: