December/January 2005 Newsletter: A Royal Christmas

[GrandDuchess]

THE ROYAL FORUMS' NEWSLETTER – DECEMBER/JANUARY 2005 *

Welcome to the December/January 2005 edition of The Royal Forums’ newsletter.

It is with great pride and joy that we introduce a special forum just for this special time of year: A Royal Holiday. In this forum, you’ll find all things devoted to the holidays, those related to how our favourite royals spend their holidays but also how people around the world and the members of this forum spend this special season, too.

While beautifully decorated trees, piles of presents, and platters of sugary cookies have come to represent/symbolize the season on a superficial level, at the heart of this time of year, whatever your religious or cultural beliefs, is family.

While we all have families of our own offline, at this community of royal watchers and fans, we are a unique family of our own. This year especially has been about including TRF members in the kind of things the TRF Team was typically been responsible for. This year, our members re-designed our banner and our members voted for their favourite, and when our Avatar Galleries experienced a software glitch, instead of viewing it as a problem, the TRF Team made it an opportunity to include our talented members and enable them to create avatars that other members could enjoy and share. And for these monthly newsletters, we’ve asked for feedback on what our members are interested in reading about, and when someone suggested that rather than just profile individuals each month, how about profiling palaces or pieces of jewellery, we took it to heart and included Buckingham Palace in our first palace profile.

I feel very strongly, and I have probably said it at nauseum in previous newsletters, that the TRF Team of Administrators and Super Moderators is also a family of its own. And it has been a personal pleasure to welcome Pdas1201, Danielle, and Warren to our team, as well as GrandDuchess who has been a great co-editor of this newsletter as well as a great spearheader of new ideas. One of GrandDuchess’s ideas was to organize a secret gift exchange between the mods in which anyone who wanted to participate would be given the name of a fellow participant and would buy for them several small gifts. There were just two requirements: One item had to represent your country’s monarchy if you had one and one item should be representative of your country. Everything else was up to you, based on what you knew about your fellow moderator. I personally had a great time putting together a special package for my “Secret Santa,” finding items that I hoped she would enjoy, and it meant as much to me to find the perfect items for this package as it does for me to find the perfect gifts for my own family members—a true testatment to what my co-Administrators and Super Moderators mean to me.

//GrandDuchess & Alexandria

PS. If there is a royal person or residence, or a special piece of jewellery you would like to see covered in a future issue of our newsletter, please let us know here. Our member comments and suggestions are always welcome.


FORUM NOTES

The TRF Team would like to welcome Ysbel to our moderating team! Ysbel will be helping to moderate the British Forums with Elspeth, Warren, and Martine.

Just for the holiday season, A Royal Holiday is a special forum to celebrate the season. Here you can catch up on what festive activities the various royal families are up to this season, review this last year in the royal world, and look forward to 2006.

Please note that our major attachment cleanup continues over the next few weeks, with images which have not been properly posted according to our rules being removed.

There are a lot of members who have not posted in the forum at all this year, as well as some who have been members for over a year but have never posted. The TRF team would like to remind everyone that member accounts which have been inactive for at least a year may be subject to deletion, which will start taking place in the next few weeks.

[GrandDuchess]

THE ROYAL CALENDAR


BIRTHDAYS

Princess Aiko of Japan (1 December 2001)
Prince Mikasa of Japan (2 December 1915)
Birthday of Norway’s new Prince (3 December 2005)
King Rama IX of Thailand (5 December 1927)
Prince Nikolaus of Liechtenstein (6 December 2000)
Pablo Nicolás Urdangarin y Borbón (6 December 2000)
Princess Bhajara Kittiyabha of Thailand (7 December 1978)
Princess Amalia of The Netherlands (7 December 2003)
Crown Princess Masako of Japan (9 December 1963)
Prince Joachim of Belgium (9 December 1991)
Prince Michael Karadjordjevic (15 December 1985)
Archduke Lorenz of Habsburg-Este (16 December 1955)
Princess Akiko of Mikasa (20 December 1981)
Intanta Elena of Spain (20 December 1963)
Emperor Akihito of Japan (23 December 1933)
Queen Silvia of Sweden (23 December 1943)
Princess Vittoria Cristina of Savoy (28 December 2003)
Princess Kako of Japan (29 December 1994)


ANNIVERSARIES

Death of Prince Bernhard of The Netherlands (1 December 2004)
Wedding Anniversary of the Duke and Duchess of Brabant (4 December 1999)
Wedding Anniversary of Prince Bertil and Princess Lilian of Sweden (7 December 1976)
Wedding Anniversary of The Princess Royal and Timothy Laurence (12 December 1992)
Anniversary of the death of Queen Desideria of Sweden and Norway (16 December 1860)
Anniversary of the death of Count Lennart Bernadotte of Wisborg (21 December 2004) (born Prince of Sweden, Duke of Smalandia. Son of Prince Wilhelm of Sweden and Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna)


DAYS OF NOTE

Birth of Norway’s new Prince (3 December 2005)
Prince Albert visits the Vatican (5 December 2005)
The Nobel Prize Award Ceremony & Banquet in Stockholm (10 December)
The Nobel Peace Prize Awards in Oslo (10 December)
King Carl XVI Gustaf’s Dinner for the Nobel Laureates (11 December)

[GrandDuchess]

ROYAL QUICK HITS

Here are a few threads that the TRF Team feel are of note and worth to take a look at

# On December 3, Norway's Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit welcomed a new baby son. Learn more about Norway's new little Prince Sverre Magnus, who is King Harald and Queen Sonja's first grandson here.

# It is Nobel time again, with celebrations taking place in both Norway and Sweden. You can follow the Swedish royal family's participation of this prestigious award here, and in Norway here.

# The holiday season is all about giving, even virtual giving. So tell us what you would give to the royals this season, everything from the frivolous and the mundane to the serious.

# Like many of us, the royals too send holiday card to their family and friends, oftentimes with a nice family portrait. As we look forward to the 2005 cards sent out by the royals, you can view cards of holidays past sent here.

# Looking forward to the coming year, the Danish Lilleprinsen will be christened on January 21. A thread for the baptism is here. You can guess the baby's name or pick the godparents.

[GrandDuchess]

Jingle bells, jingle bells… Santa comes to visit both cottage and palace. In Sweden King Carl Gustaf hides behind the beard, in Denmark Santa has a French accent, in Norway the Santa has not been on duty for some time (in order not to scare the children), in England, Santa has been a no-show for many years. The way they celebrate Christmas varies, but no matter where you turn, it’s a holiday held very dear in the Royal Families of Europe. Here we will give you an insight to how A Royal Christmas is celebrated.

*Your insight to how the Royal Christmases in Europe are celebrated comes to you courtesy of the following members of the TRF Team:

* Denmark - GrandDuchess
* Norway - Norwegianne
* England - Elspeth
* Spain - Anna R
* Sweden - GrandDuchess

[GrandDuchess]

A Royal Danish Christmas

Christmas is a dear holiday in the Danish Royal Family, just like for the other Royal Houses of Europe.

The creatively blessed artist Queen Margrethe is very amused in designing the table setting and decorations every year, something that the public could get a glimpse of a few years ago when she opened an exhibition at Royal Copenhagen of Christmas tables with different themes that she had designed.

Unlike some of her majestic colleagues, Queen Margrethe likes to buy all of her Christmas present herself, and spends much time on finding the right ones for each person. In the beginning of December each year, she leaves for one of her family members to rule the country for a few days while she takes off to London together with a Lady-in-Waiting to do her annual Christmas shopping. The Queen surely appreciates the big city and its enormous range of merchandise.

The Danish Royal Christmas is celebrated at Marselisborg Palace in Århus every year, but an exception was made in 1999 when the late Queen Ingrid hosted four generations of her family on both sides (Danish and Greek) of her immediate family for a large family Christmas celebration.

Prince Henrik is said to act as Santa Claus during the Christmas celebrations, but without a beard which is said that he feels unnecessary. The food on the table is a mix of Scandinavian, European and southern European food and traditions. Queen Margrethe’s favourites are foie gras and plum pudding (which she buys during her London trip), and Prince Henrik’s are cheese and vine. The little princes Felix and Nikolai appreciate the rice porridge and the hunt for the almond in it, which the family eats early in the day on Christmas Eve 24 December.

1: Queen Ingrid's large family Christmas 1999, 2: the Christmas Seal "Preparation for Christmas in the Celestial Castle" from 1970 designed by Queen Margrethe, 3 & 4: the Christmas Seal "The Feast of the Hearts" designed by Queen Margrethe for The Danish Christmas Seal Foundation's 100th jubilee in 2003, 5-10: Queen Margrethe's designs for the Royal Copenhagen exhibition in 2003

[GrandDuchess]

A Royal Norwegian Christmas

Christmas in Norway is usually a family event, and for the Norwegian royals it is no different. Chiristmas is the holiday when King Harald, Queen Sonja, their children, their children-in-law and their grandchildren join together to celebrate. Royal family guests from outside of Norway has been customary in previous years. Princess Margaretha and Prince Axel and their family spent Christmas with their Norwegian family, but these days the numbers are dwindling and the only foreign guest arriving, will probably be Countess Ruth of Rosenborg, the widow of Count Flemming of Rosenborg. The Christmas celebration usually alternates between taking place at Skaugum, the residence of the Crown Prince and Crown Princess, and Kongsseteren, the winter home of the King and Queen.

The holiday season starts with the traditional photo-shoot – who could forget Sonja and Marius playing on the floor just after Haakon and Mette-Marit’s engagement was announced? – either at Kongsseteren, if the Christmas is celebrated there, or at the Palace or Skaugum. The photo-shoot marks the beginning of the Christmas holiday for the royals, and it isn’t until the Christmas service that they are seen again, though Queen Sonja has a tradition of visiting different institutions on “Little” Christmas Eve, AKA. December 23rd.

The family, also take the time to remember those gone before, and visits the royal mausoleum at Akershus Castle to put down flowers in their memory.

The dinner on Christmas Eve is a tribute to the mixed ancestry of the family, and a variety of dishes prove the family’s mixed heritage. It is topped by a dish from Queen Maud’s side of the family: The dessert is a true British Christmas pudding.

Most Norwegian families attend Church on Christmas Eve, but except for Haakon and Marius’ attendance at Christmas Eve midnight service the year before Ingrid Alexandra was born – the Royal family usually attend the Christmas service at Christmas Day. Though, last year, for the first time since King Olav’s death, they attended the service in Asker Church.

With two babies, two toddlers and an almost nine- year-old boy, the Christmas in the Norwegian royal family is definitely set out to be the children’s holiday.

1: The Royal Family in a Christmas photo shoot in 1994, 2-3: Christmas 2001, 4-5: Christmas 2003, 6-8: Christmas 2004

[GrandDuchess]

A Royal Swedish Christmas



December is a very busy season for the Swedish Royal Family, not only when it comes to official duties, but also within the more private sphere of the family and out of the public light within the Royal Court.

In the beginning of the month, there are some very hectic days for the members of the Royal Family and the staff of the Royal Court as everyone prepares for year’s biggest official event in Sweden – the Nobel Prize Awarding Ceremony & Banquet.

As the royals are busy with the last fittings for their dresses, coordinating the jewellery, and the office staff coordinating the last important details with The Nobel Foundation – some of the most senior staff of the Royal Court have already been involved in the planning of the Nobel festivities for a long time (over one month).

While preparing for the most prestigious events on 10 December, the royals also have the King’s annual dinner for the Nobel Laureates to think about, an event which is normally scheduled to take place the day after the Nobel Day (the day of the Awarding Ceremony and Banquet on 10 December). The members of the Royal Family need to coordinate dresses and jewellery for this occasion also - and by this time they must have gone through the briefing material for the Laureates of the year in order to have a pleasant experience together with them, as they will dine with these geniuses of our time twice in one week.

When the Nobel Week is over and the Laureates travel home (or sometimes remain in Sweden to visit other places) to where they will no longer be treated as super stars, the over 1 000 guests of the Nobel Banquet has had their experience of the year, the multi million television audience at home in front of their TV’s have had their annual Nobel experience and own little celebration, and the national media have written their articles, published all the pictures and graded this year’s dresses, commented colours and the arrangement – then we can imagine that it’s time for the Royal Family to start to think of the coming family Christmas.

The King and Queen might start to discuss the menu for the annual Christmas luncheon for the staff of the Royal Court together with the kitchen staff, an event usually held just before the Royal Family go on their Christmas break and winter holiday. The one thing that the staff of the Royal Court always looks forward to the most every year, in connection to the dinner, is not the food made by the Palace kitchen – but instead it’s the seating arrangements. Every year, the royals who attend are raffled on where they will sit – which means that anyone in the staff, no matter what position, can end up sitting next to the King or Queen! During the course of the afternoon there are also lotteries for things like baskets of delicatessens or fine wines. Everyone also receives a Christmas gift every year, which is usually a book (the past years often the newest book in the marvellous series on the Royal Palaces) – with a dedication from the Master of the Palace/the King himself.

And then there are the private Christmas and birthday presents to plan for and buy. Queen Silvia celebrates her birthday on 23 December, the day before Sweden celebrates the main day of Christmas, so it must be an even harder nut to crack for the royals than just having to think of the normal Christmas presents. Both the King and Queen like to take a shopping tour in Stockholm before Christmas, and a few eyebrows might be raised when people see them on the go in the city, or up close in a shop. The royal children are used to moving around the city as they live more freely, so we can imagine that they shop for their presents for some time, and not just during one or two occasions. Last December, the King was seen in many antique shops before Christmas, looking for the perfect gift for his Queen.



Christmas is one of the Swedish Royal Family’s favourite holidays, and when it finally stands at the doors after a hectic month, they celebrate in a traditional and calm way. The Royal Family gathers at Drottningholm Palace together with Princess Christina, her husband Tord and their sons, and Princess Lilian comes over from her villa together with her Labrador dog Bingo. We can presume that also present to represent the dogs in the family are the Labrador Jambo, slovensky kopov Zila, and Prince Carl Philip’s rottweiler Gela.

In the day of Christmas Eve, it has earlier been a tradition for the Royal Family to attend a Christmas Service in the Drottningholm Palace Chapel. The Chapel is under care of a local parish, so the local parishioners who come to attend can spot their royals up in the royal box above them. They can however not greet the Royal Family in a more personal way, because they enter through a private entrance, leading directly from the Mineral Cabinet in the private parts of the Palace, to the royal box. Whether the Royal Family still holds on to this tradition is not really know, but during the past years there has been no mention of it in the media.

The Christmas tree stands decorated in all its beauty, and the buffet table features all of the normal ingredients of a Swedish Christmas dinner, and according to Princess Madeleine’s wishes also oysters are included. Queen Silvia has also brought traditions from her two home countries to the Christmas dinner; one is the Weinachtsstolle (a sweet sort of soft bread cut into pieces, which has fruits, raisins and cognac in it, and is powdered on top) and the other is to serve dark black Brazilian coffee with the dessert. A small part of the bible is read, but there is not much singing as there might otherwise be during a Swedish Christmas - except for the snaps songs, which the King and Princess Christina’s husband Tord are very fond of, so those are sung. The strongest tradition of the Swedish Royal Family must be that King Carl Gustaf is Santa for the family every year. It has been said that the Queen tried to stop or pause this tradition a few years ago as the children were grown up, but that Crown Princess Victoria and Princess Madeleine objected so strongly that the tradition is kept every year. How the procedure is when Santa, or perhaps we should still title him King, comes is not known. But we can only imagine how cosy, or perhaps funny, he looks in the loose beard as he steps in to distribute the gifts on Christmas Eve.

Our visit to the Swedish Royal Family on Christmas Eve ends with how we can imagine the scene in the late evening. A crackling fire spreading warmth in the drawing room as the King, Queen, Crown Princess Victoria, Princess Madeleine, Prince Carl Philip, Princess Lilian, Princess Christina, Tord and their three handsome sons sit in sofas and arm chairs, enjoying a cup of warm glögg and some pieces from the wide assortment of Christmas candy on the dessert table, while fours dogs lay asleep on the floor by the fire. Snowflakes slowly fall outside the windows as the darkness sets around the estate of Drottningholm Palace, but the chandeliers, candles and flames from the fire inside, spread a warm glow through the windows…

When Christmas is over, the Royal Family start their well-deserved winter holiday. In a country like Sweden, where winter sports are very traditional and important, and there is a lot of snow in some parts, skiing is a vital part of the royal holiday. Everyone in the Royal Family enjoys skiing, but perhaps the passion is greatest for the King and Prince Carl Philip, who both have participated in skiing competitions. The destination varies - the King has a cottage in Storlien in Jämtland County which they use for skiing trips, Prince Carl Philip has a home in the deep forests of his duchy Värmland where piece and quiet can be enjoyed, but the popular skiing destination Åre is also a popular place to head for the royal children, whom have been spotted there during the last few years. Sometimes the royals also go abroad to enjoy good skiing, and at those occasions they often go to some of the exclusive winter destinations of Europe, such as Verbier.


1: The Royal Couple and Princess Victoria, celebrating her first Christmas, 2: the Royal Family at Christmas time 1982, 3: the royal children at Christmas time 1982, 4: the royal children at Christmas time 1984, 5: the Royal Family at Christmas time 1987, 6: the Royal Family decorating their Christmas tree in 1992, 7: the Royal Family's millennium celebration, New Year's 1999, 8: the Royal Family's millennium celebration, New Year's 1999, champagne and fireworks at the balcony of the Royal Palace of Stockholm 9: the Nobel Awarding Ceremony on 10 December, 10: the Queen's 60th birthday 2003

[GrandDuchess]

A Royal British Christmas

If it's Christmas, it must be Norfolk! The Queen and her family celebrate Christmas and New Year at Sandringham House, her private home in Norfolk. For some years in the 1970s and 1980s, the Queen, as Queen Victoria had done, held her Christmas celebrations at Windsor because the extended family (including all the Gloucester and Kent cousins) had outgrown Sandringham; the Queen and Prince Philip and their children and grandchildren then spent the New Year at Sandringham. Nowadays, the royal Christmas celebration is just for the Queen's immediate family and takes place at Sandringham, where the Queen is resident from around the middle of December to some time in February.

Although British tradition is to open gifts on Christmas Day, the Royal Family adheres to the European tradition of opening presents on Christmas Eve; this tradition is thought to have started with the Danish Queen Alexandra, and has been followed ever since. The royal family is well known to not exchange expensive presents; many gifts from one family member to another are bought at country fairs and local shops and are utilitarian rather than luxurious. The Queen used to do her Christmas shopping from a selection of merchandise from Harrods that had been taken to Buckingham Palace for her to choose from. These days she doesn't shop at Harrods, but other shops send merchandise for her to shop from. As well as shopping for family and friends, the Queen buys gifts for members of her staff, who are asked to choose their gifts beforehand from a list priced according to the status of the staff member. The Queen also gives Christmas puddings to her staff; these are not produced in the palace kitchen but bought from a supermarket or grocer.

The Christmas celebrations are rather formal and traditional, and family members are expected to dress accordingly. On Christmas morning, the family attends a service at St Mary Magdalene Church at Sandringham; most of the photos of the royal family at Christmas are taken as they leave the church after the service, so we're familiar with the sight of the royal men in their suits and overcoats and the ladies in their smart coats and hats. The service is followed by Christmas lunch, with turkey and all the traditional accompaniments followed by Christmas pudding. Afternoon tea includes a traditional Christmas cake, a very rich fruit cake iced with marzipan and, appropriately, royal icing. Like most other British families, the royal family pull Christmas crackers, and it's said that all of them put on the paper party hats that are found in the crackers after they've been pulled - all of them except the Queen, that is. A lady who's used to wearing real crowns isn't going to sit at her tea table wearing a paper one, even at Christmas!

In the afternoon of Christmas Day, the Queen's traditional Christmas broadcast to the Commonwealth is aired on the television and radio. This used to be a live broadcast, but these days it's recorded ahead of time and usually includes some footage of significant events that occurred in the royal family during the year. The Queen writes her own Christmas speech without advice from her civil servants or the government. In 2003, the Queen's speech was recorded at Combermere Barracks, Windsor, in appreciation of the armed services during the Iraq war. This was the first Christmas speech to be recorded in its entirety in a location other than one of the Queen's homes - a gesture deeply appreciated by the armed forces and their families.

One rather unusual Christmas tradition is that of the Glastonbury thorn. In British legend, Joseph of Arimathaea visited England after the death of Jesus, bringing with him a staff cut from a thorn tree (sometimes identified as the tree from which Jesus's crown of thorns was made). He planted the staff in the ground near Glastonbury in the west of England (a site also very closely associated with the Arthurian legends, since the Holy Grail of Arthurian legend is believed to be the cup from which Jesus drank at the Last Supper and also brought to England by Joseph of Arimathaea during the same visit), and it rooted in the ground and grew. There are still thorn trees at Glastonbury, which flower at Christmas; they're a variety of hawthorn, and they're believed to be the descendants of that original tree. Every year at Christmas, a sprig of the Glastonbury thorn tree in flower is cut and sent to the Queen.

The day after Christmas is known as Boxing Day in Britain and is also a nationwide holiday. The royal family spend Boxing Day shooting pheasant on the Sandringham estate, in the long-standing tradition of British country families. The shooting continues throughout January; the family leaves Sandringham in February.


1-2: Christmas Day Service 2004, 3: Boxing Day Service 2004, 4: a Christmas pudding, one of the Queen's Christmas gifts to her staff, 5: Sanringham, 6: St Mary Magdalene Church where the Royal Family worship during their stay at Sandringham, 7: the Queen as she delivered her first Christmas broadcast on Christmas Day 1952, after having been Queen for nearly 11 months, 8: the first televised Christmas broadcast 1957, 9: a ballet dancer next to a decorated Christmas tree at Buckingham Palace, 10: Glastonbury Thorn

[GrandDuchess]

A Royal Spanish Christmas

The Spanish Royal Family celebrates Christmas like any other family in the country: Together. The preparations start in the beginning of December, so that everything is perfect on December 24th, when the whole family comes to Zarzuela for dinner. There's the Christmas tree to be decorated with its multicolored glass balls, the Belén, representing the Nativity scene, the flores de páscua and the gifts.

Christmas for the Borbóns start on December 20th, Infanta Elena's birthday, and the date is celebrated among the Christmassy decorations of la Zarzuela, a preparation for the official event, Christmas Eve, which promises to be even more special this year since it'll be the first Christmas for the two newest additions to the family, Irene Urdangarín and Leonor de Borbón.

After addressing the nation in his annual Christmas speech, the King goes back to the dining room where the whole family is expecting him to supper. Every year, besides their children and grandchildren, the kings share their Christmas supper with Princess Irene of Greece, Queen Sofia’s sister, and with Infantas Pilar and Margarita, the king's sisters, with their families.

The supper consists of typical Christmas dishes: golden almond soup, turkey, sea bream or red cabbage to accompany the lamb. For dessert they have dried figs, dates, pies, polvorones, marzipan and nougat.

On December 25th, before the Infantas got married, the whole family used to attend mass at La Zarzuela chapel before reuniting again to lunch. Nowadays Elena and Cristina together with their families go to the home of the Marichalares and Urdangarines to lunch. Last year the kings had lunch together with the Princes of Asturias and some members of the Princess’ family – her mother and maternal grandparents.

For the New Year, the family usually comes together again, but this time at a different location, the Baqueira Beret ski resort in the Valle de Arán. The Royal family comes in parts, as their schedules let them but, on the 31st they’re all there to enjoy some time together.

At night they come together at a house on the mountains to eat the traditional twelve grapes. The Royal family sits in front of the TV and eats the grapes while watching the clock of Puerta del Sol doing the countdown for the new year. This Spanish tradition came to life at the beginning of the 21st century to end the year with luck.

And as the holidays started with Infanta Elena's birthday party, they end with the King's birthday. The Royal family ends their Christmas celebrations with the Epiphany, known as well as the Fiesta of the Three Wise Men, Caspar, Melchior and Baltasar on January 6th.

They come back to Madrid on January 5th, to celebrate the king’s birthday with a concert in the National Auditorium. The Three Wise Men also pass by the palace to leave their gifts to the children.

On January 6th, the Kings and the Princes attend the Military Passover known as “Pascua Militar”, a celebration established by King Carlos III on the 18th century.


Christmas 1963