The Gist
Princess Diana said this Queen Elizabeth New Year’s Eve tradition was “agony.”
Diana would spend Christmas and New Years with the royal family at Sandringham Estate.
The royal family had an unwritten rule that was largely followed.
Anyone who has seen Spencer (the 2021 drama starring Kristen Stewart) or read InStyle’s royal holiday coverage will know Princess Diana was not a fan of Christmas with the royal family at Sandringham Estate. In fact, she found their traditions “mortifying” and “terrifying,” and often tried to “escape” as soon as possible. Unfortunately, the people’s princess also found little reprieve at New Year’s Eve with the monarchy.
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Queen Elizabeth and Princess Diana in November 1982.
Similar to Christmas, traditionally, the royal family spends NYE at Sandringham. Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip were even known to remain there until February 6, the anniversary of the death of Elizabeth’s father King George VI in 1952. Elizabeth typically rang in the new year with a party, extending invitations of all members of the royal family.
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Prince Charles, Queen Elizabeth, and Princess Diana on July 1, 1981.
Elizabeth’s New Years traditions included a church service at St. Mary Magdalene and a pheasant hunt. One of the late queen’s favorite activities to engage in on the holiday was “lucky dip,” according to Brian Hoey, royal expert and author of At Home With the Queen. As it goes, a butler would bring in a tub filled with sawdust and several notes containing predictions for the upcoming year. The family would gather around in the evening to draw from the tub and read their fortunes aloud.
Once the clock struck midnight, Elizabeth would head off to bed, which allowed other royal family members to do the same. Waiting until the queen went to bed was an unwritten yet largely followed rule in the family—and one that irritated Diana, according to William Heseltine, Elizabeth’s private secretary between 1986 and 1990.
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Princess Diana and Queen Elizabeth in August 1987.
“For Diana the long royal evenings were agony,” he once said in an interview. “There’d be an hour or so in the sitting room of everyone sitting around making conversation, and nobody felt it right to go to bed before the Queen did. And Diana was driven to such extremes that she’d excuse herself and go to bed, which was thought to be rather bad form, going to bed before the Queen.”
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