Families usually get together on Christmas Day to enjoy turkey and all the fixings around the dining table.
However, rather than eating at the adult table with their parents and other adults when they were young, Prince William and Prince Harry were sent to the nursery to eat with their cousins. Fine china and toddlers are a surefire recipe for disaster, as any parent will attest!
Darren McGrady, a former royal chef who served under the late Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Charles, and Princess Diana, claims that Her Late Majesty celebrated Christmas in the royal family in a “Victorian” manner.
Darren previously told HELLO!, “The children always ate in the nursery until they were old enough to conduct themselves properly at the dining table.” “There was never a situation where the Queen had a high chair at the table and a small baby wailing and spilling food.
It was Victorian-era. Nanny would look after the kids, who belonged in the nursery. It’s like Downton Abbey in the modern era.”
It’s unknown if King Charles and Queen Camilla continue the royal custom of dining in separate rooms, but it is known that the family enjoys a customary dinner. Christmas pudding is served for dessert after they typically eat “turkey, different stuffings – sage and onion, chestnut – and the traditional sides like roast potatoes, mash potatoes, parsnips, and Brussels sprouts,” Darren continued.
For the Queen and the royal family, we would bake a large Christmas cake. For Prince William, Prince Harry, Zara, Peter, Princess Beatrice, and Princess Eugenie’s nursery, we would bake a smaller cake. There was always fruit cake—traditional fruit cake, marzipan, and royal icing.”
For the first time in royal history, King Charles is anticipated to invite his wife Camilla’s family, including her children and grandchildren, to the Christmas Day luncheon this year.
Christmas lunch will reportedly now be served in Sandringham House’s larger ballroom rather than the dining room in order to accommodate the additional guests, according to Chris Ship, ITV’s royal editor.
From her previous marriage to Andrew Parker Bowles, Camilla is the mother of Tom Parker Bowles and Laura Lopes.
Laura and her husband Harry are parents to Eliza and their twin sons, Gus and Louis, while Tom and his ex-wife Sara Buys share a daughter Lola and a son Freddy.