The Major Way Prince Louis Broke Royal Tradition on Christmas Day

Wearing long pants in the winter is standard practice for most of us. But for young children in the royal family, it's a major faux pas.

As People explains, it's a British tradition for upper-class boys to wear shorts with knee socks, rather than pants, during the winter. When the boys turn 8, they can wear pants (or trousers, as the British call them). "It is considered very suburban for a little boy to be in long trousers when he is just a little boy," Ingrid Seward, editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine, said to People. The tradition has been ongoing for years; Prince William and Prince Harry, too, wore shorts year-round in their younger days.

Prince Louis, however, wore tartan pants on the royal family's 2023 Christmas Day church outing, even though he's only 5 years old. (Louis wore shorts on Christmas Day in 2022.) His plaid blue and green pants matched Prince William and Kate Middleton's Christmas outfits; if they were anyone else, no one would've batted an eye at Louis's attire.

And while Prince Louis's Christmas Day outfit raised more than a few eyebrows, it's not the first time the royal family has bucked the shorts-in-winter tradition. In 2019, Prince George wore shorts for the royal family's Sandringham Christmas walk—and he was just 6 years old. 

More recently, Prince Louis wore pants to Kate Middleton's annual "Royal Carols: Together at Christmas" event at Westminster Abbey. Whether he's making a statement about his maturity level or he just doesn't like having cold knees, Louis is turning plenty of heads with his holiday-season sartorial choices.