Writing as the Duke of Windsor, the former King Edward VIII recounted Christmas at Sandringham as a child at the turn of the twentieth century.

 

"Christmas at Sandringham was Dickens in a Cartier setting", he recounted.

 

The Duke's family home was "York Cottage" on the Sandringham estate, which he shared with his siblings and parents, the Prince and Princess of Wales. Each Christmas Eve the young Duke and his family would pile into a servant's bus to take them up the road to Sandringham where his grandparents, King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, would be waiting.

 

The Duke recounted:

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" In my family the display of the Christmas tree and the exchange of gifts always took place on Christmas Eve. After tea we all  piled into my father’s omnibus, ordinarily used for transporting  the servants, and rode up to the Big House [Sandringham], where my grand-parents [King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra] would be waiting in the Saloon with some of the older  members of the Household, who usually spent Christmas with  them.

 

It would not be long before the loud banging of a gong  heralded the approach of Santa Claus himself. An instant later there would appear in our midst the real thing: a tall, hooded figure in full regalia, a flowing white beard, red coat, black patent-leather boots, and over his shoulder a bulging bag. The fact that we knew this resplendent impersonator to be one of the upper servants in no way diminished our joy over his arrival .

 

After bowing to the King and Queen, who would greet him jovially, Santa Claus led the company out of the Saloon towards the Ballroom. The double doors flew open before his advance revealing in the centre of the room a fir-tree from the woods, tall enough to touch the ceiling, festooned with tinsel, tinted glass balls, patches of cotton-wool in imitation of snow, and ablaze with candles.

 

But, as with everything else at Sandringham, even the business of Christmas proceeded along prescribed lines. Around the Ballroom were tables heaped with presents, with an ample section marked off for each person, the first for the King and the Queen, the next for my mother and father [the future King George V and Queen Mary], and the rest more or less according to precedence.

 

The children’s tables were in a far comer, segregated from the rest. This precaution was no doubt intended to safeguard a precious Fabergé jade masterpiece or a bejewelled clock on my grandmother’s table from becoming the casualty of a wild shot from a toy gun or a misdirected football issuing from our direction. We children were always shown our presents last, and the suspense was agonising. And when finally our turn came, the Ballroom floor was rapidly inundated with a sea of wrapping- paper, through which we pedalled and honked in toy motors."

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The Duke of Windsor