British Royal Christmas 1: 2008-2021


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Savannah is a mixture I think - Windsor and Kelly. I also see a resemblance to Lady Louise as a toddler too, but that could mainly be the blonde curls!
 
9 am service is in a private part of estate, so ladies are in less formal attire.
11 am service is in the public part, where wellwishers can greet them, take pics etc, so they are in formal outfits including hats and jewellery.


Both services are in the same church - St Mary Magdalene's which is in the publicly accessible part of the estate and can be visited by general public. However, on Christmas Day, the police keep the public back from the walkway to the church until after the communion service and only allow them to walk down to the church area after the royals have left the first service. They also do a security check on these people.
 
Thank you, annaelfka. :flowers:

Only two hours apart? I suppose when you have servants doing all the cooking and laying out your outfits you can spend all Christmas day going to church and eating and changing into different outfits between each activity.

I find the hat business interesting because I have always thought there was some element of propriety involved, i.e. Anglican women were supposed to cover their heads in church like Catholics do (or at least did), but if the Queen herself doesn't see the need to wear a hat then the hat-wearing for Anglicans seems to only be about dressing up. Where's Bertie? She'll know.

:poinsettia:


I'm here after a quiet Christmas at home and a lovely Boxing Day on Sydney Harbour watching the start of the Sydney-Hobart Yacht race.

The hats question - it was always expected that a woman would cover her head in church until WWII and then, due to rationing and the need to conserve material for uniforms and other weapons, the ruling was relaxed to say that women didn't need to have hats and gloves anymore - CoE in the UK and Australia - don't know about elsewhere. After the war and the lifting of rationing, which in the UK was well into the 1950s, many women never returned to the idea of wearing hats to church although older ladies tended to do so but the younger ones didn't. Now The Queen would be classed, after the war, as a 'younger' woman but...she was also more influenced by her mother and grand-mother and so hat wearing it was (the royals did stick to the rationing rules during the war) but as the years have gone along and the next generation have mixed more and more with women not wearing hats and gloves to church it is now only the 'public' occasions that they all wear the hats.

Personally I have never worn a hat to church, except to a wedding when I was about 6, and have never seen a woman younger than my mother in age (my late mother was 3 years younger than The Queen to give you an idea of the ages of women I am talking about) wear a hat to an Anglican service. The only woman I see wearing a hat to church at my local CoE church now is the darling 103 lady who tuts at the rest of us who even wear slacks to church and the boys who wear sneakers but she says 'they are here and hearing the good news so it probably isn't all that important that they are wearing sports shoes'.
 
Still no James!

Louise didn't attend until 2011 - aged 8 so I wouldn't expect to see James for another 2 years.

Edward and Sophie are determined to keep their children out of the public eye as much as possible and probably also believe that 8 is a better age to be attending these sorts of events.
 
:previous: Hadn't realised she was 8 at the time. I think they have a sensible approach.
 
Thank you, Bertie. :flowers: That explains it. The last time I attended a C of E service (other than weddings and funerals) would have been about 1967, and probably the Christmas Day Family Service. My experience is therefore limited to a time when all ladies did wear hats to church. If the ladies in that conservative North Shore parish ever abandoned the habit during the War, they picked it up again when it ended. Actually when I think about it now I suspect some of them were still wearing their pre-War hats and gloves.:)
 
That is very likely - my grandmother always said that her mother wore her pre-war hats during the war as she insisted on wearing a hat although my grandmother didn't bother from about 1942 onwards - probably because she realised from personal experience how important material was - she was working on making the wings for the planes - starching material, layers and layers of it to make the wings to defend Australia.
 
My favorite part was seeing a big thick swollen Zara, from ankles to face, ready to burst. :lol:

That's a girl baby in there.
 
I'm curious as to what age Royal children are allowed at the 'adult' activities... Is it based strictly on age, or the child's maturity level? Eg. are they allowed at the Christmas dinner table, or are children up to age x fed separately?
 
I'm curious as to what age Royal children are allowed at the 'adult' activities... Is it based strictly on age, or the child's maturity level? Eg. are they allowed at the Christmas dinner table, or are children up to age x fed separately?

In regards to eating food, we don't know and we'll never know. That's a detail kept private.

In regards to events, christmas church services, balcony appearances etc it depends upon the parents and closeness to the throne IMO. We haven't seen Savannah, Isla or James attend the christmas church services (unless I am mistaken) but we have seen Margarita Armstrong Jones, the chatto family and Lady Louise Windosr.
 
In regards to eating food, we don't know and we'll never know. That's a detail kept private. In regards to events, christmas church services, balcony appearances etc it depends upon the parents and closeness to the throne IMO. We haven't seen Savannah, Isla or James attend the christmas church services (unless I am mistaken) but we have seen Margarita Armstrong Jones, the chatto family and Lady Louise Windosr.

Do you know when Louise began attending? I think this is definitely something unique to each child, but generally seems to be around the 5yr old mark. In looking at old photos, zara's 1st appearance was 1985( almost 5) william in 1986 (4 1/2 clutching his mothers hand and Harry 1989

edit - i just saw above Louise was 8 when she first attended. I think that is a more appropriate age. We will see if that is allowed for George and his siblings.
 
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Do you know when Louise began attending? I think this is definitely something unique to each child, but generally seems to be around the 5yr old mark. In looking at old photos, zara's 1st appearance was 1985( almost 5) william in 1986 (4 1/2 clutching his mothers hand and Harry 1989

edit - i just saw above Louise was 8 when she first attended. I think that is a more appropriate age. We will see if that is allowed for George and his siblings.

This is post#797 from Iluvbertie:
START
Louise didn't attend until 2011 - aged 8 so I wouldn't expect to see James for another 2 years.

Edward and Sophie are determined to keep their children out of the public eye as much as possible and probably also believe that 8 is a better age to be attending these sorts of events.
END
 
This is post#797 from Iluvbertie:
START
Louise didn't attend until 2011 - aged 8 so I wouldn't expect to see James for another 2 years.

Edward and Sophie are determined to keep their children out of the public eye as much as possible and probably also believe that 8 is a better age to be attending these sorts of events.
END

I don't know how it works in the CoE but in the RC church, children would reach the age of reason at 7 and it was around then they made their First Communion. Perhaps its similar in the CoE?

Other than that, I would think it would depend on the child and his demeanor. Can he/she sit still and quiet during a service? To me it doesn't make sense to bring a child to church if he/she has absolutely no clue what is going on.
 
:previous: Maybe its not the church service but the all the people, photographers and noise. Louise seems a calm child and still they waited until she was 8.

He does go to events such as Horse of the Year show and County Fairs and the like so it's not as if he's never allowed out.
 
It is likely related to James' personality and his ability to sit still. He may be a lively 6 year old, thus his parents don't feel he would behave well enough to sit quietly during the service. He has been seen a lot more over the past 1-2 years, so I am sure when he turns 7 or 8 we will see him walk to church with his sister. He only attended Trooping the Colour this year, and even then he wasn't in the carriage - only the balcony. As Cepe said, Edward and Sophie appear to want their children to be shielded from the public eye and that is their wish. It is a bit of a shame as James appears to be an adorable little boy!
 
I don't know how it works in the CoE but in the RC church, children would reach the age of reason at 7 and it was around then they made their First Communion. Perhaps its similar in the CoE?

Other than that, I would think it would depend on the child and his demeanor. Can he/she sit still and quiet during a service? To me it doesn't make sense to bring a child to church if he/she has absolutely no clue what is going on.

In the CoE Confirmation is usually around 14 - 15 with First Communion shortly after that although some individual churches or jurisdictions do allow an unconfirmed person to take communion.

For example - my school, which is CoE, runs Confirmation classes as part of the Christian Studies course for Year 8 students (ages 13 - 14) with Confirmation late in the year, when most are 14 although many wait another year or so after the classes to actually make the public commitment. First Communion is then taken the following Sunday morning after the Confirmation Service. The school I went to as a child did something similar - but as a boarding school we would have Confirmation on the Saturday night and then First Communion on the Sunday morning before going out for the day with our parents to celebrate the occasion.

Prince William, for instance, was confirmed in 1997. They had a private service for him at St Georges while Harry was confirmed with his Eton classmates in 2000. William was about 15 and Harry nearer 16 when confirmed.
 
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Yes I have visited it - as can anyone who visits the estate when the big house is open to the public.

I would say it is a normal sized country parish church, comparable to others I have visited, or attended services in, in rural England.

So it seats 100 or less? Sorry to be stupid, but I forgot to look inside rural English churches.
 
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About 100 - 150 I would say - maybe 200.

Rural villages have quite large churches, even for small communities because the size of the church was a reflection of the attitude of the people towards God and the buildings were, and even later ones than the medieval ones, were built more to the glory of God than to the necessity of the local community per se.
 
If you imagine a standard oblong church with altar, then the main body of the church with aisle and pews either side - this will hold about 100. Quite a number of churches extended the main body of the church at the sides and this could add another 50-70 places.

In some of the large parishes churches which can be found in Norfolk and the Fen country, they had choir stalls/balcony above the nave of the church - for said choir or servants. Additional capacity of maybe 30. St Mary Magdelene's doesnt have this
 
Sophie's hat is awesome. Lovely to see Louise again. :)
 
I didn't realize that The Royal Family were still at Sandringham - I thought they only stayed there until Boxing Day, but that was probably just my assumption. Do we know if they're staying there until New Year's Eve/Day or not?

Those were nice photos, thanks for posting dbarn67. I recognize Louise's coat, I think she last wore it at the Christmas Ascot last year.

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silly question: why did HM called Kate to take flowers? I didn't see the little girls saying they were for Kate

This could be the wrong answer, but Catherine probably had her own flowers to collect; in the video HM is collecting her own flowers. (By the way, thanks for posting the video, it's nice to see that Catherine let Margarita and Louise [who were her bridesmaids in 2011] help her with the flowers.)
 
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In the CoE Confirmation is usually around 14 - 15 with First Communion shortly after that although some individual churches or jurisdictions do allow an unconfirmed person to take communion.

For example - my school, which is CoE, runs Confirmation classes as part of the Christian Studies course for Year 8 students (ages 13 - 14) with Confirmation late in the year, when most are 14 although many wait another year or so after the classes to actually make the public commitment. First Communion is then taken the following Sunday morning after the Confirmation Service. The school I went to as a child did something similar - but as a boarding school we would have Confirmation on the Saturday night and then First Communion on the Sunday morning before going out for the day with our parents to celebrate the occasion.

Prince William, for instance, was confirmed in 1997. They had a private service for him at St Georges while Harry was confirmed with his Eton classmates in 2000. William was about 15 and Harry nearer 16 when confirmed.

That is interesting. In our church (catholic) First Confession is 2nd grade--about age 7 and first Communion is either later that year or the following year ( age 8-9). Confirmation is about the same age at COE (13-14).
We have always brought the kids to church but some services we spent more time outside than in. It was nice when we had a children's liturgy.

I think bringing your child to services depends on the child and on the service (like we never brought them to midnight Mass)
 
Hereditary Princess The Queen and Prince Philip are at Sandringham until 6th February.Visitors come and go but I expect the Princess Royal to be at Gatcombe early in the new year as Zara is due to give birth.

Dman

She's wearing thick tights - maybe that's enough.
 
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