Why the Queen kept her Christmas tree up for over a month
VICTORIA JONES | POOL | AFP
Cerith Gardiner - published on 01/10/20 - updated on 12/22/22
And how King Charles III will continue some key family Christmas traditions.
This will be the first year the royal family celebrates Christmas without Queen Elizabeth II. Thankfully, they’ll be able to hold on to some decades’-old traditions to help make the occasion extra meaningful, many of which were implemented by Elizabeth during her reign.
However, there were some more unusual traditions adopted by the Queen for some very personal reasons — notably, how she kept her Christmas tree up until February 6.
Most years the late-sovereign spent the Christmas season at her private Sandringham house in Norfolk, on the east coast of England. It was her little hideaway from life at Buckingham palace — although, when we say little, it’s still enormous by most people’s standards, standing on a 22,000-acre estate. It also happens to be one of the few properties that was actually owned by the Queen herself (and not the state).