From her lifestyle ventures to her partnership with Netflix, the Duchess of Sussex has consistently received a mixed reception. Her latest collaboration with the streaming platform, With Love, Meghan: Holiday Celebration, offers viewers a peek into her festive preparations alongside a circle of celebrity friends. However, royal commentator Hugo Vickers has been far from impressed, branding the project “cringe” and questioning its authenticity.
Royal Expert Brands Show ‘Artificial’ and ‘Unrelatable’
Speaking exclusively to The Sun, Vickers did not hold back in his assessment, describing the holiday segment as “artificial, expensive, and unrelatable.” He added: “I mean, it’s as if she’s invented Christmas, and frankly, she didn’t. And where is the real, genuine Christmas spirit? You know, it’s just not there. The whole thing was very cringe-making.”
Vickers also criticised Meghan’s focus on Christmas crackers, a traditional British festive staple she introduces to her American audience. He remarked: “She talks about all the things that they were going to put into these crackers, and she talks about it as if no one’s ever made a cracker or pulled a cracker.”
A Different Take on a British Tradition
The episode highlighted by Vickers opens with Meghan deciding to make her own Christmas crackers for family members, carefully choosing the gifts, jokes, and surprises to place inside the familiar rolled cardboard tubes wrapped in festive paper. Traditionally, Christmas crackers are store-bought and pulled apart by two people at the dinner table, with a paper crown, a corny joke, and a small novelty prize randomly claimed by whoever ends up with the larger half.
Meghan, however, puts her own spin on the tradition by creating personalised crackers, selecting specific gifts for each intended recipient rather than leaving the contents to chance.
Links to Royal Christmases Questioned
Vickers suggested that Meghan’s approach was designed to evoke her brief experience of royal Christmas celebrations. “Of course, naturally, sort of relating crackers to being an English Christmas, as if to say, this is what the royal family does,” he said. “It seems as if she is trying to link it back to the couple of Christmases she spent at Sandringham.”
He went on to claim that the segment appeared strategic rather than heartfelt, adding: “It’s product placing and marketing and, you know, relating it to them [the royal family], which is the ticket on which they travel.”
Support From Prince Harry and Celebrity Friends
Despite the criticism, the holiday special has also attracted praise, particularly for Prince Harry’s visible support of his wife. In one scene, he sneaks a tender kiss from Meghan before the trailer shifts to festive moments inside their Montecito home. His warm cameo stands out, especially given his absence from the show’s second season.
Meghan is also joined by a host of well-known friends throughout the trailer, including tennis star Naomi Osaka, chef Tom Colicchio, close friend Kelly McKee Zajfen, and producer Lindsay Roth, adding to the star-studded feel of the festive production.
