Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Won’t Be Spending Christmas Together: Separate Holiday Plans Revealed After Royal Exclusion
Prince Harry, the British prince and husband of ex-actress Meghan Markle, who have kept their distance from British royalty for some time in the past, will spend this Christmas with their families, according to the reports that have surfaced since they resigned from their senior royal status in 2020. They have maintained a constantly increasing distance from the royal functions and celebrations since then. It was no wonder, after the couple of rather tense years with the royal family, that they chose to spend Christmas away from each other—not surprising, particularly considering they could no longer attend the major family functions.
Tension with the Royal Family
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have had a bad relationship with the royal family since this duo announced they were leaving their roles as working royals. This is mainly because a married couple wants to lead an independent and private life. Another reason is that they also want to get out of the whole full-time media attention given to them while working for the royal family. However, their decision was instantly surrounded by controversy, and both Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have been candid about their struggles with the institution in the years that followed.
However, the after-effects of leaving have been marked by public statements, high-profile interviews, and a series of revelations that leave everybody wondering about the future for their relationship with the royal family. The tell-all interview they gave Oprah Winfrey in 2021 must’ve been another publicity stunt, as they hurled accusatory darts at members of the royal family for allegedly racially inflammatory remarks, plus their pleas for help regarding their mental health had been ignored. No doubt, the public firestorm after the Oprah interview and Prince Harry’s memoir, “Spare,” which told about personal animosity and stress with the royal family, can only widen the chasm. End
The royal siblings have chosen to spend their Christmas apart this year, factoring in all the differences the couple is witnessing with the royal family. Friends close to the couple have disclosed that Prince Harry will travel to the United States this holiday to spend time with his wife, Meghan, and their two children, Archie and Lilibet. On the other hand, Meghan will remain in California to spend the holiday with her family. It was agreed that the couple be apart for some time: Meghan went off to Los Angeles to meet at her mother’s house with the family members, while Harry took off alone to the UK to hang out with his mates and attend some business meetings.
The Royal Exclusion
This third decision to spend Christmas apart arises at a time when Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have increasingly been becoming distant from the rest of their family members. Traditionally, Christmas is that time of year that the royal family goes to spend it at Sandringham—a Norfolk estate belonging to the Queen – and celebrates there with festive meals, churches, and family traditions. Since Prince Harry and Meghan Markle stepped back as senior royals, however, they’ve generally been kept out of most of these classic celebrations.
While they did join the royal family occasionally for some events in the past, they never came back to the UK for any significant family gathering. The exclusion from the annual Christmas Day church service by the royals makes tensions between the family and the couple more acute. For all that Harry has professed publicly about wanting to mend his ties with his family, the wounds still run too deep – all things considered, after the publication of his memoir and everything he exposed about practices within the monarchy.
A Changing Narrative
Despite tensions, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have been wrapped up with their own projects and family life in California. They have maintained their charitable foundation known as the Archewell Foundation and carried on unbroken with both of them going about quite a busy schedule of public appearances and media projects. Meghan has also carried out her podcast “Archetypes,” while Harry has been doing several things about mental health and social issues.
That alternative holiday arrangement of the couple may also mean a different holiday season to which they are now getting accustomed as far as family relationships are concerned. Even though their having been left out of the royal circle is one of their biggest fears, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle manage to circumvent that exclusion from the family to create more individualistic traditions as to whom they would like to spend holidays with. This type of separation makes them free from the stuffy restrictions of royal life, and their private celebrations could give each an opportunity to position themselves at one end or the other depending on which end is more important to them: children and private relationships.
Conclusion
KreativanSays: There are questions around their place in the larger family dynamics as Prince Harry and Meghan Markle move forward without the rest of the Royal Family. There is no promise of what will happen to the future dynamics between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle and the monarchy when the latter reigns as such. Maybe, just maybe, one will desire to see reconciliation between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle and the royal family, or maybe this gap will always exist. It seems Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were more centered than ever on their own family and on their mission to change the world.
At least, the fact that this Christmas, as will be said, they will not be celebrating together constitutes the strongest milestone that they have to achieve in balancing personal desires and expectations of the royal family. Whether such a bond with the royal family will ever really recover remains to be seen, but now, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle embrace their new life in California while building new traditions and gifting themselves a great holiday season with the love of their lives.