The royal Christmas tradition Meghan Markle was allowed to break but Kate Middleton never did

There was one royal Christmas tradition Meghan Markle was allowed to break once, but her sister-in-law Kate Middleton never did. 

• Back in 2017 Meghan Markle spent the festive period in Norfolk with Prince Harry and the rest of the Royal Family a few weeks after getting engaged.
• Traditionally royal partners didn’t celebrate at Sandringham until they’d married and officially become part of the Royal Family. 
• This royal news comes as we revealed the bizarre rule that banned Princess Anne and Timothy Laurence's marriage in England.  

There was one royal Christmas tradition Meghan Markle was allowed to break once thanks to the Queen and she seems to have set a new trend. Back in 2017, Meghan and Prince Harry marked Christmas Day with the late Queen and Prince Philip at Sandringham House. They were accompanied for these special celebrations by plenty of the Queen’s children and grandchildren, including Prince William and Kate Middleton. But unlike the others, Meghan and Prince Harry weren’t married at the time of this iconic festive period. 

The Sussexes had announced their engagement just a month before but the now-Duchess had yet to tie the knot with the Queen’s grandson. Her being invited to spend Christmas at Sandringham was incredibly significant as a result, as it’s understood that traditionally partners didn’t get this privilege - only spouses did. 

Instead, most of them only enjoyed their first royal Christmas in Norfolk the December after their wedding. This was reportedly the case for Mike Tindall after his marriage to Zara, as well as for the Princess of Wales. She reportedly started dating Prince William in 2001, but it was only the December after Kate Middleton and Prince William’s wedding in 2011 that she joined his family for the first time.

For this pivotal milestone, Kate Middleton’s “frugal” Christmas gift for the Queen consisted of a practical present and is said to have helped forge her close bond with her late grandmother-in-law. Although she and Prince William also announced their engagement in the autumn, according to The Independent she chose to uphold the tradition and declined an invitation from the Queen to come to Christmas lunch at Sandringham in December 2006.

They report that royal author Robert Lacey claimed in his book, Battle of Brothers, that she felt she “would go to Sandringham on Christmas Day only when she was engaged and had a ring to prove it”. In the end, it was eight months later that Kate experienced her first Norfolk Christmas. 

Of course, the situations were slightly different between the sisters-in-law as Meghan’s family lived across the pond in the US. In light of this, the invitation for her to enjoy her first Christmas as an engaged couple with Prince Harry and his family is a very thoughtful one. 

It also looks as though it paved the way for a new, modern approach to festive invites. In 2019, two years after Meghan spent her first Christmas in Norfolk, Princess Beatrice’s then-boyfriend Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi joined her at Sandringham. 

In the years since this royal Christmas tradition Meghan Markle was allowed to break, she’s spent one more at Sandringham, before marking the holiday in Canada in 2019 and in the US since then. Although many might be hoping to see the royals all gather together to celebrate with King Charles and Queen Consort Camilla on this first Christmas since losing the Queen, it’s currently thought unlikely Prince Harry and Meghan will fly over for the celebrations.