Over the course of their 15-year marriage, Prince Charles and Princess Diana dealt with conflict, infidelity, and familial tension. However, like any married duo, they also participated in standard traditions, including spending the holidays with his family. And while Diana’s fraught relationship with the royals may not have been visible to the public at the time, later accounts made clear how uncomfortable the week was for her. According to Ingrid Seward’s William & Harry, in 1981, Diana made her first appearance at the royals’ Christmas celebration: “It was Diana’s first experience of those forced festivities, and she would dread them ever afterwards.” 

Seward reports that this 1981 celebration started off on a rocky note, as Princess Anne was reportedly kicked out of her room—and told that Charles and Diana would be staying in it instead. (Anne was not pleased with this decision.) The awkwardness only continued from there. Instead of exchanging gifts on Christmas Day, the royals traditionally opted to give them to each other a day prior, on Christmas Ever. Diana was aware of this precedent—and spent time carefully picking out her presents. “Too ill to go shopping, she had selected her gifts from glossy catalogues and [had] spared no expense,” Seward wrote. “Charles would later complain about his wife’s extravagance, but in those early days he was still prepared to indulge her. He did warn her, though, that no one was expecting anything too elaborate.” However, Charles didn’t seem to adequately prepare Diana for the family’s traditions with gift giving. 

In anticipation of the celebration, Diana purchased cashmere sweaters, Floris soap, nice clothes, and even a barbecue set for Prince Philip. However, she quickly learned that those gifts were far from acceptable when it came to the royal family’s standards—which were more of the white elephant variety. “In a bizarre game of one-upmanship, the royal women tried to outdo each other in the parsimony of their gifts,” Seward wrote. “Anne, for instance, was fond of handing out woolly socks bought at horse trials and country fairs. Princess Alexandra tied her parcels with old pieces of wool. Diana had wanted to be generous. She ended [up] feeling foolish.” While Charles reportedly saw no issue with the celebration (even writing to a friend that the two “had such a lovely Christmas”), Diana desperately wanted to leave. Her agony continued over the course of the holiday week, culminating in her throwing herself down a staircase in January, according to Vanity Fair. 

Diana later confided in close friends about her dislike over the holiday celebrations with the royals. “It was highly fraught,” Vanity Fair reports she told Andrew Morton. “I know I gave, but I can’t remember being a receiver. Isn’t that awful? I do all the presents, and Charles signs the cards. [It was] terrifying and so disappointing. No boisterous behaviour, lots of tension, silly behaviour, silly jokes that outsiders would find odd, but insiders understood. I sure was [an outsider].” Over time, her desire to be anywhere else during the holiday week became apparent, as she reportedly began to spend time in London—rather than be at Sandringham. Yet even after she and Charles separated in 1992, Diana spent the two subsequent Christmas Eves with the family. When the royal pair formally divorced in 1996, Diana was no longer subjected to the festivities, and she vowed to “never again submit herself to the ‘ordeal’ of a royal Christmas,” Simon Simmons wrote in Diana: The Last Word.