Harry's Christmas Plan Needs More Talks Than Brexit
Returning to Britain Was Easier Than Returning to Dinner
LONDON — Prince Harry's reported hopes of spending Christmas with his father have run into a formidable British institution: the administrative machinery that grows up around a family disagreement.
The latest reports, including this Yahoo Entertainment account of a "heartbroken" Harry, suggest the Duke of Sussex is deeply disappointed at the prospect of another Christmas away from King Charles, while Meghan reportedly prefers to spend the day with her mother, Doria Ragland. The same coverage cites unnamed sources, a Sunday Times claim that no invitation was ever coming, and a pre-Christmas meeting with the King and Queen Camilla that insiders describe as confirmed. All three cannot be true. Westminster has declined to say which one is not.
The disagreement has grown into a diplomatic problem so complicated that Brussels has reportedly offered to send the Brexit negotiators round to help.
Their first recommendation was to establish whether anybody had actually received an invitation.
Talks stopped there. They have not restarted, although somebody did bring biscuits.
Worried About Harry at Christmas
- Britain got through Brexit in four years. Harry's going to need six years and a team of constitutional lawyers to get a turkey dinner with his dad. And at least with Brexit, nobody asked whose side the gravy was on.
- Meghan wants to spend Christmas with her mother. Crazy, right? Somebody should tell her that when you marry a prince, December goes to Buckingham Palace. It's in the small print, right under the part about the hats.
- The King can appoint prime ministers, hand out honours and receive ambassadors. Getting his own son to dinner needs sign-off from the guy who orders the stationery.
- The British press treats a family making up like a national emergency, and that's because happy families don't fill six pages of a Sunday supplement. Nobody ever bought a paper for "Everyone Had a Lovely Time."
- Harry wants to see his father. Fleet Street wants to know who authorised this dangerous departure from the established narrative.
Prince Harry and King Charles at Christmas: Brexit Was Easier Because Both Sides Agreed There Was a Door
Britain spent years negotiating its departure from the European Union, producing agreements, protocols, extensions and enough parliamentary speeches to heat a medium-sized borough.
Harry's Christmas negotiations have already run into difficulties that make the Irish border question look like a dispute over which side of the table gets the gravy.
The first problem is working out whether the invitation exists.
The second is finding out whether Harry wants to accept it.
The third concerns Meghan's Christmas preferences.
The fourth requires someone to establish whether Prince William will be in the same building.
The fifth involves roughly 600 newspaper columnists who insist that any agreement reached without their participation would undermine transparency.
A sixth, raised late and by nobody in particular, is parking.
A veteran Westminster negotiator who reviewed the proposed arrangement suggested that Britain should invoke Article 50 again, this time to withdraw from Christmas altogether.
"With Brexit, at least everybody knew which organisation Britain was leaving," he explained. "With Harry, nobody seems certain whether he's returning to the family, returning to Britain or simply returning a telephone call."
Harry, who served in the British Army and undertook military deployments, has apparently discovered that ordinary civilian life demands a rather different kind of courage. It is one thing to complete military training. It is another to tell your wife that Christmas with your relatives might involve a lengthy discussion of things you wrote in 2023. Sandhurst, mercifully, did not cover this.
Royal Christmas Plans 2026: The Palace Establishes a Department of Festive Reconciliation
The latest public reporting describes Christmas plans as uncertain, with accounts suggesting the Sussexes are more likely to celebrate with Doria Ragland than attend the traditional royal gathering.
As ELLE's October report on Harry and Meghan's Christmas plans explains, sources have suggested that the couple do not expect to attend Sandringham, despite their return to Britain.
The palace's proposed solution is understood to involve a Christmas Reconciliation Working Group, supported by a subcommittee for awkward silences. Its responsibilities would include establishing seating distances, permissible conversation topics, the acceptable duration of hugs and procedures for resolving disputes involving cranberry sauce.
A draft protocol reportedly recommends that nobody mention memoirs, interviews, television documentaries, the Oprah Winfrey programme, newspaper litigation or the events of the previous six Christmases.
That leaves the weather.
Unfortunately, any discussion of British weather leads to a discussion of California, which risks reviving the original disagreement. The committee has therefore recommended that conversation concentrate on sprouts.
A rival faction has proposed parsnips. Talks continue.
Prince Harry's Relationship With King Charles: Fatherhood Has No Diplomatic Immunity
The real absurdity is that Harry's reported ambition is not particularly revolutionary. He would like to spend time with his father.
Ordinary British sons accomplish this by driving to their parents' house, asking whether they should bring anything and being told to pick up milk. Possibly bin bags.
Harry's equivalent may involve a royal diary secretary, security advisers, carefully worded correspondence and several newspapers explaining why his arrival would either save or destroy the monarchy.
A family counsellor who examined the situation offered a definition of reconciliation: two people who have fallen out deciding to treat one another with enough kindness to try again.
The palace rejected this sensible approach for being insufficiently complicated.
A political scientist then calculated that if Christmas reconciliation required unanimous approval from every member of a British family, no family in the country would have celebrated Christmas since 1974. The study's methodology consisted of attending Christmas dinner. It was considered conclusive.
Archie and Lilibet's Christmas: The Children May Have the Simplest Solution
Harry's children, Archie and Lilibet, are caught in the middle of a problem the adults have spent years making unnecessarily elaborate.
Children generally understand grandparents without parliamentary instruction. A grandfather is somebody who provides affection, occasionally produces sweets and can be talked into reading the same bedtime story three times.
The royal household appears determined to improve on this arrangement. Its proposed system begins with a background check and ends with a memorandum on the constitutional implications of chocolate biscuits.
Harry's hardest decision may have nothing to do with monarchy, titles or royal protocol. It may simply be working out how to give his children a happy Christmas while keeping the peace with both sides of their family.
Millions of parents face precisely that problem, although considerably fewer have to worry about the Daily Mail interpreting their Christmas pudding.
Royal Family Reconciliation: Telephone Calls Remain Under Constitutional Review
For now, reconciliation remains possible. The main obstacle is persuading Britain's royal establishment that letting a son see his father does not require renegotiating the Treaty of Versailles.
And if the negotiations collapse, Harry has one option left. He could telephone his father.
The palace has not yet confirmed whether this procedure complies with the constitution.
10 Humorous Observations on the Royal Christmas Crisis
- Sandringham has enough rooms for an entire royal household and apparently not one spare room where two brothers can avoid speaking to each other.
- Archie and Lilibet have royal titles, and they may still need a security clearance to get a biscuit off their grandfather. Granddad. Just a biscuit.
- Meghan misses California, where you can have Christmas without ending up in a constitutional diagram.
- Royal experts can read a woman's handbag from two hundred yards and tell you what it means for the monarchy. Not one of them can explain why a father and son can't just go to lunch.
- Every royal Christmas comes with presents, decorations and one professional commentator ready to explain that whoever isn't there means the monarchy is finished.
- This palace has survived wars, abdications and constitutional crises. Ask for four more dinner plates and suddenly it's a threat to the operating model.
- A normal British family settles its Christmas disagreements with a fight over the television remote. The Windsors apparently need a summit.
- Archie and Lilibet have two sides of the family to visit, and the newspapers act like going to one is treason against the other. It's a lunch run, not Yalta.
- A royal reunion would wreck the gossip economy. Thousands of "palace insiders" would have to go out and find an actual inside.
- The biggest threat to royal journalism isn't republicanism, socialism or falling circulation. It's the Windsors getting along.
Harry's Christmas Plan Crisis
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