Harry and Meghan’s bittersweet Christmas – ‘It may hurt seeing the royals together’

It’s approaching the most wonderful time of the year, as they say – and opening up recently in an interview, giving a rare insight into family life, Meghan Markle revealed sweetly that Christmas with the Sussexes get better ‘every year’ as their two children children Archie, five, and three year old Lilibet, get older. But for Prince Harry and his wife, , the season may also throw up some mixed feelings.

A source claimed: “For Harry. it reminds him that he doesn’t have any of his side of the family to celebrate with. The kids won’t be seeing their cousins, and that was one of his favourite things growing up – all the cousins playing together at Sandringham. It may well even hurt seeing all the royals together, going to church and just enjoying each other’s company”.

Former Suits actress Meghan, 43, finds it equally ‘tough’, they maintain – if for different reasons. For Meghan – whose mum, doting grandmother Doria Ragland, will surely be hands-on for their festivities – there will be one glaring absence over the festive period – her father, Thomas Markle, who she has been estranged from since 2018. “Meghan only has her mum, as there’s almost zero chance of a reconciliation between her and her dad.”

Meghan’s half-sister recently alleged that their father Thomas, 80, who has had at least one documented heart attack in 2018 and a stroke in 2022, is in increasingly poor health, warning her estranged sibling to reconcile with him before it’s “too late”. But the Duchess of Sussex, as she stated sadly in her Netflix series, ended her relationship with her father before her Windsor wedding to Prince Harry, after he was caught staging paparazzi photographs in exchange for cash.

Harry’s mind will, understandably, turn to the family he is not seeing – gathering together as they do each year in Sandringham, including his father, King Charles and sister-in-law Kate, who he was once so close to, who have both been battling cancer this year. The last time the Sussexes celebrated Christmas in the UK was in 2018, when Meghan was pregnant with their first child, Prince Archie.