Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have released their 2024 holiday card on the heels of reports that the Sussexes didn’t receive an invitation from the royal family to join them at Sandringham in Norfolk for their annual Christmas holiday.
On Dec. 16, Harry and Markle released their holiday card, which featured a grid of six photos. The message, “On behalf of the office of Prince Harry and Meghan, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Archewell Productions and Archewell Foundation, we wish you a very happy holiday season and a joyful new year,” was printed on the bottom.
Included in those six pictures were a rare glimpse of the couple’s children, Prince Archie, 5, and Princess Lilibet, 3. In the family photo, Harry is seen bending down to greet his daughter with a hug as Markle is seen doing the same with Archie.
The photo also includes the family’s three dogs.
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According to a source, this holiday card was intended only for public use and Harry and Markle’s friends and family received a separate card. This will not be shared with the public.
Markle and Harry aren’t the only royal family members not celebrating Christmas with King Charles, as Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson declined the monarch’s invitation to celebrate Christmas together.
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The Duke and Duchess of York, and their daughters Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, will not be in attendance for morning church services or lunch with the royal family at the Sandringham House, People reported.
The news comes as Prince Andrew was revealed to recently have contact with an alleged Chinese spy, Sky News reported. His office released a statement on Friday, saying he had cut ties with the Chinese businessman on the “advice” from officials, but that the pair had never discussed anything of a “sensitive nature.”
As for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, they are expected to spend Christmas in the United States where they live once again this year, People reported, citing a source.
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The Sussexes haven’t spent Christmas at Sandringham with the royal family since 2018 — the same year they were married.
The couple left England in 2020 and eventually settled in California.
They continue to have a fraught relationship with the senior royals after Harry’s tell-all memoir “Spare,” their similarly controversial 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey, and their Netflix series “Harry & Meghan,” which was highly critical of the royal family as an institution.
King Charles III and Queen Camilla, Prince William and Kate Middleton, as well as their children, Princes George and Louis and Princess Charlotte, are expected to head to Sandringham before Christmas and remain there until New Year’s.
The Princess of Wales held her first Together at Christmas carol service last year before she was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year.
Christmas Day at Church of St. Mary Magdalene on the estate last year was the princess’ last public engagement for months before she revealed her diagnosis.
In September, she announced she had finished her round of preventative chemotherapy.
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Charles was also diagnosed with an undisclosed type of cancer this year and is still undergoing treatment.
The royal family’s sojourn to Sandringham is a long-held tradition in which the late Queen Elizabeth would usually retreat to the estate from December through February — when her father, King George VI, died.
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“It will be like any other Christmas, focused on the young family,” Grant Harrold, former personal butler to Charles, told the New York Post in November of the royal family’s planned holiday this year. “They are very family-orientated, like the late queen, so that will be their focus.”
Fox News Digital’s Brie Stimson contributed to this report.
