Who Smashed Meghan Markle's Christmas Gift For Prince Harry?

Queen Elizabeth wears a blue and turquoise coat and matching hat as she stands on the Buckingham Palace balcony with Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, who is wearing a black outfit, and Prince Harry, who is wearing military uniform — (Image credit: Chris Jackson/Getty Images)

As the festive season approaches, royal fans are excitedly awaiting a holiday message from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. While the couple's 2024 holiday plans are unclear, Prince Harry shared a hilarious anecdote about a previous Christmas they spent with their son, Prince Archie.

At the start of 2020, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry announced their intention to step down as senior members of the Royal Family. As a result, they celebrated Christmas that year in Montecito, California, with Meghan's mom, Doria Ragland. In his memoir, Spare, Prince Harry reflected on the couple's first Christmas in the United States.

Harry revealed that, in keeping with "the Windsor family tradition," they exchanged some gifts on Christmas Eve. "One present was a little Christmas ornament of... The Queen!" he wrote (via The Sun).

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Prince Harry wears a suit with a blue tie and Meghan Markle wears a blue and white dress while holding baby Prince Archie, as they meet Desmond Tutu

Prince Harry was shocked to open the ornament of his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II. "I roared," he explained. "What the—?"

As for how the Duchess of Sussex had acquired the pitch perfect present, Harry explained, "Meg had spotted it in a local store and thought I might like it." He continued, "I held it to the light. It was Granny's face to a T."

Understandably, Prince Harry wanted to display the ornament on their Christmas tree, writing, "I hung it on an eye level branch."

It would appear that Prince Harry felt emotional seeing his grandmother in ornament form, as he noted, "It made me happy to see her there... It made Meg and me smile."

Unfortunately, Prince Harry's joy was short-lived, and the ornament found itself in a rather precarious position. "Archie, playing around the tree, jostled the stand, shook the tree, and Granny fell," the Duke of Sussex wrote. "I heard a smash and turned. Pieces lay all over the floor."

Realizing that something terrible had happened, Meghan and Harry's son apparently tried to fix the problem immediately. "Archie ran and grabbed a spray bottle," Harry revealed. "For some reason he thought spraying water on the broken pieces would fix it."

And if you thought the situation couldn't get stranger, you'd be mistaken. Watching Archie's plan to spray water on the broken ornament unfold, Meghan told him, "No, Archie, no—do not spray Gan-Gan!"

Instead, Prince Harry cleaned up the mess, but the humor wasn't lost on him. "I grabbed a dustpan and swept up the pieces, all the while thinking: 'This is weird,'" he wrote.

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Amy Mackelden is the weekend editor at Marie Claire, where she covers celebrity and royal family news. She was the weekend editor at Harper’s BAZAAR for three years, where she covered breaking celebrity and entertainment news, royal stories, fashion, beauty, and politics. Prior to that, she spent a year as the joint weekend editor for Marie Claire, ELLE, and Harper's BAZAAR, and two years as an entertainment writer at Bustle. Her additional bylines include Cosmopolitan, People, The Independent, HelloGiggles, Biography, Shondaland, Best Products, New Statesman, Heat, and The Guardian. Her work has been syndicated by publications including Town & Country, Good Housekeeping, Esquire, Delish, Oprah Daily, Country Living, and Women's Health. Her celebrity interviews include Jennifer Aniston, Jessica Chastain, the cast of Selling Sunset, Emma Thompson, Jessica Alba, and Penn Badgley. In 2015, she delivered an academic paper at Kimposium, the world's first Kardashian conference.