Princess Diana Hated Christmas With the Royals So Much, She "Escaped Before Lunch"

Not everyone loves the idea of a Christmas stacked to the brim with tradition after tradition, and for Princess Diana, the thought of enjoying the holidays with her fellow royals at times made her feel so uptight that she would often ditch the festivities as soon as she possibly could.

The newest episode of The Sun's Royal Exclusive show detailed how Diana would cope with the holidays and saw royal experts Ingrid Seward and Arthur Edwards detailing how the late princess would weasel her way out of events.

"For many years, our Queen Camilla, she would leave after lunch and go and spend time with her own family down in Wiltshire," Edwards explained. Diana's escapes, sometimes, came even sooner than that.

Seward added that Diana always tried following Camilla's lead. "Diana used to always leave after lunch. When things were really not going at all well, she was to dread these royal family Christmases," she said. “And she would always—and sometimes she escaped even before lunch and just did the church."

Edwards explained that Diana's exits were always final, too. "Not always but a few times I remember, yes, I remember her passing me on the motorway coming back once,” he added.

The expert recollections check out, as multiple people have reported Diana's disdain for Christmas with the Windsors. She confided in her hairdresser Richard Dalton about not enjoying the holiday.

“The princess just hated going to Sandringham for Christmas," Dalton told Kitty Kelley for her book The Royals. "She told me it was freezing cold and dinner had to be over by 3 o’clock. ‘It’s 3 and time to watch me on TV,’ she’d say, imitating you-know-who. The royal family had to watch the Queen’s Christmas message on television. Diana said it was a command performance.”

The drama started with Diana's first Christmas at Sandringham in 1981, with royal biographer Andrew Morton—who wrote Diana: Her True Story—revealing that her distaste for royal Christmas started because of gag gifts, according to Vanity Fair.

Diana was "mortified" to find out on Christmas day that the royals only gave each other gag gifts, with her receiving a toilet paper holder in return after gifting sister-in-law Princess Anne a cashmere sweater.

“It was highly fraught,” Princess Diana told Morton. “I know I gave, but I can’t remember being a receiver. Isn’t that awful? I do all the presents, and Charles signs the cards. [It was] terrifying and so disappointing. No boisterous behavior, lots of tension, silly behavior, silly jokes that outsiders would find odd, but insiders understood," she said, adding that she "sure was" an outsider.

Read the original article on InStyle