This year Christmas restrictions mean many will be spending the festive period without friends and family. The Royal Family aren’t exempt from the new lockdown rules, and the restrictions are sure to be a blow for the Queen, who spends Christmas every year with several family members.
Members of the Royal Family descend every year to spend the Christmas period with the Queen and Prince Philip.
Just like most families, the royal Christmas involves exchanging presents and eating a festive feast.
Every year the Queen and her family attends church nearby to her Sandringham estate in Norfolk, where they meet members of the public and attend a special Christmas Day service.
However this year, for the first time in over 30 years, the Queen and Philip will forego Sandringham for Windsor Castle.
READ MORE: Prince Philip title: Why did the Queen make Philip a Prince?
The couple will be swapping the usual family gathering for a quiet Christmas as a pair, joining many others across the country whose Christmas plans have been significantly derailed due to restrictions.
Dr Kaori O’Connor, anthropologist at University College London (UCL), told Express.co.uk the Royal Family will find Christmas as “unsettling” this year as the public will.
She said: “I think this royal Christmas is going to be slightly unsettling for us, as well as for them.
“Rituals are very reassuring, whatever they are, in this case it’s going to church in the morning, the procession of the cars to the church, knowing what’s happening behind the walls.
Dr O’Connor said: “I find it interesting that the younger royals, certainly William and Kate, are much more out and about now. That’s helping to sort of knit things together.
“In a way, one thing that Covid has done is taken this togetherness from the private to more of a public situation, which is nice.
“It kind of makes up for the fact we can’t all share Christmas in quite the same way, but they’re out there.”
The Queen has been introduced to Zoom over the pandemic, so will most probably get to have a virtual family gathering this Christmas.
And although much about this Christmas will be unprecedented for the nation in 2020, there are some things which will remain comfortingly the same.
The Queen has given a Christmas Message every year since the start of her reign and was the first monarch to televise her speech to the nation.
This year the Queen’s Christmas message will go ahead as planned, and no doubt many will be tuning in to hear the Queen’s thoughts on this year and good wishes for the future.
