Festive gatherings at Sandringham were often joyful and sometimes tense, as I discovered when researching a special Christmas edition of my TV program Reading the Royals.
Yet this year’s meeting will be like no other.
It comes after one of the most challenging years for the Windsors. Not only is King Charles still being treated for an unknown form of cancer, but his daughter-in-law Kate has undergone grueling treatment for the same disease after major abdominal surgery last January.
And if that wasn’t enough suffering for a year, Queen Camilla contracted pneumonia after a trip to Australia and Samoa.
The king is determined to make this Christmas a big celebration for the extended royal family. Prince William told families at a Christmas event for the 1st Battalion Mercian Regiment in Wiltshire this week that he was looking forward to spending it with 45 family members ‘all in one room’!
Attendees for the first time include the King’s stepson, Tom Parker Bowles, who revealed last weekend he would be taking his two children to the royal retreat in Norfolk.
The food writer and Mail on Sunday columnist has never visited Sandringham. He usually spends Christmas with his ex-wife, former fashion editor Sara Buys, and their teenage children, Lola and Frederick.
‘It’s been like this for the past fifteen years: I go back to my ex-wife’s house, sit in my sweatpants, go to the pub while the meat is in and then try to get my kids to watch The Wild Geese. Classic. So this would be a bit different,” he told the Daily Telegraph.
The King and Queen led the royal family at Sandringham Church on Christmas Day last year
For the first time, Tom Parker Bowles will be among the Christmas revelers at Sandringham
As Tom will soon discover, there are no tracksuits at Sandringham. Men wear dinner suits, while women can be expected to change outfits up to five times a day, according to Angela Kelly, a former dresser to Queen Elizabeth.
“I really don’t know anything about it,” he said. “I know there’s turkey and Brussels sprouts and church. And I need to bring a suit and a tuxedo.”
The reason Tom breaks his 15-year habit is very poignant: Queen Camilla begged him to join her and his stepfather.
“My mom said, ‘I’d like you to come, I haven’t had Christmas with you in a long time,’” he said. ‘It’s been a great two years for them. The older you get, the more aware you become of mortality, especially when it comes to illness and the rest of it.”
On his mother’s infection, he added: ‘She went back to work before she should have, but she is doing well. She’s tough. She is sad that she missed Remembrance Sunday. That’s a big day for her. She just gets on with it. She’s always been that way.
“Nothing has changed (since she became queen), except that she is now Your Majesty, instead of Your Highness, and she works much harder.”
Despite the profound significance of this year’s celebrations and the King and Queen’s intimations of mortality, there will be four notable absences from the Christmas dinner table.
Although the king’s stepson will be there – the first time a monarch’s stepchild has ever stayed at Sandringham – his youngest son will not.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex and their children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, will be in California instead. Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, will likely be the only member of either family to join them as they carve their turkey.
I’m told it’s unlikely Prince Harry and his family were even invited to Sandringham this year.
“Relationships between Harry and his family are not close enough to send an invitation,” a royal source told me. ‘It’s very sad that things are going so badly. We know Harry wants to mend fences, but there is still a very long way to go.”
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