In his 2023 memoir Spare, Harry reflected on his family’s annual Christmas Eve gift exchange and singled out one present that left him laughing out loud.
“One gift was a small Christmas ornament of… the Queen,” he wrote. “I burst out laughing. What the—? Meg had seen it in a local shop and thought I’d like it.”
Harry shared that when he held the ornament up to the light, the resemblance was uncanny. “It was Granny’s face exactly. I placed it on a branch at eye level. Seeing her there made me happy.”
But the touching moment was short-lived. Soon after the ornament was hung, their young son Prince Archie accidentally toppled it.
“Archie was playing near the tree, bumped the stand, shook it—and Granny fell,” Harry recalled. “I heard a crash and turned around. The floor was covered in broken pieces.”
In an innocent attempt to help, Archie grabbed a spray bottle to “fix” the ornament, prompting Meghan to gently stop him from spraying his grandmother. Harry swept up the fragments, admitting the whole scene felt surreal.
Since stepping back from royal duties in 2020, the Sussexes have spent every holiday season in California. Meanwhile, the rest of the royal family has continued its traditional Christmas gathering at Sandringham—without Prince Andrew.
According to sources, this year’s celebration carries added emotional weight amid King Charles’s ongoing cancer treatment and following Kate Middleton’s announcement earlier this year that she is in remission.
“The mood may be more reflective,” one insider told Us Weekly, “but it will also be a time to celebrate—especially after Kate received the all-clear.”
