Princess Diana’s Favorite Christmas Gifts Broke Royal Tradition….. Check In

The items on her wishlist are still available for purchase today.

The royals are known for gag gifts instead of expensive or flashy ones, but Princess Diana’s chic taste in gifts was at odds with the family’s Christmas traditions.

Diana’s former royal butler, Paul Burrell, spoke with Marie Claire and revealed how the late princess would spend the holiday season before and after her divorce from then-Prince Charles. Despite their split, Diana still wanted to make Christmas as festive for Prince William and Prince Harry as possible, and in turn, the kids would even buy her some of her luxurious favorites.

Butler explained that Diana collected Harry and William “the weekend before” Christmas, because they attended the annual Christmas walk at Sandringham and would celebrate the official holidays—Christmas Eve and Christmas Day—with Charles and Queen Elizabeth instead. “She and I would make stockings for William and Harry and then William would whisper in my ear and ask me what mummy would like for her Christmas stocking,” Burrell said.

Diana wasn’t a last minute shopper, either—”over the course of the year” she “would be stockpiling things while [William and Harry] were away at school.” Burrell spent time “wrapping them up and putting them inside her Christmas stocking.”

Meanwhile, the late princess enjoyed the finer things for her gifts, and had a fondness for fragrances. According to Burrell, Diana “loved aromatherapy for the bath, and I’d always buy her favorite perfume which Harry and William would pay for—Hermès 24 Faubourg. That was always in her stocking.”

Diana’s taste in fragrance wasn’t just limited to perfume. “She loved the Diptyque candles,” Burrell added. Fans of the princess who want to get a head start on Christmas shopping for 2025 are in luck, as Hermès 24 Faubourg ($220) and Diptyque candles are still available for purchase today.

The princess’s penchant for luxury fragrance breaks the royal tradition of not exchanging expensive gifts. “The King hates being given anything extravagant and expensive,” former royal butler Grant Harrold told The Mirror. “He’d be embarrassed if you spent a fortune on him. He’d say, ‘That’s lovely but you really shouldn’t have.'”

Instead, the royal family liked gag gifts. “They love doing gag gift exchanges and a Sandringham walkabout,” a source told Us Weekly. “They don’t do anything extravagant for gifts and do more funny gifts that make each other laugh.”