Christmas is a great family holiday in which most of us spend with our loved ones. Many families have their own traditions that make this day extra special and the royals are no exception.
Since 1988, the British royal family spends their Christmas and New Year festivities gathered at Sandringham House. While at the Queen's country estate in Norfolk the family exchanges gifts at teatime on Christmas Eve.
Queen Elizabeth also gifts all members of the royal household and also personally hands out presents to some staff at Buckingham Palace. She and her husband, Prince Philip sign season's greetings postcards.
A royal biographer Kenneth Rose has claimed that the Queen puts the royal children in a different room from the adults for Christmas lunch yearly.
According to the late journalist who noted conversations with the royals in his diaries, Her Majesty plans the annual feast to the very last detail.
Rose wrote that the Queen's first cousin, Prince Edward, revealed the monarch herself organises the seating arrangement and requires that the kids be seated "in another room". He said:
The grown-ups are in one big room, the children in another.
Meanwhile, Her Majesty is said to have a number of Christmas traditions including attending a church service at St Mary Magdalene, Sandringham, and gifting staff vouchers.
Prince George and Princess Charlotte once broke royal Christmas tradition by waking up very early in the morning on Christmas Day.
As it turns out the royal household has a tradition of opening and exchanging gifts on Christmas Eve rather than on Christmas morning. So, everyone gets to sleep in, however the little royals did not get the memo.
However odd some of the Windsor family traditions might seem, perhaps they are what makes the holidays special for them. Do you have any family traditions?