When Christmas Moved to Windsor: The Castle's Own Festive History
Sandringham gets all the attention, but Windsor has hosted royal Christmases since the 12th century, including a wartime pantomime starring two young princesses.
Ask most people where the royal family spends Christmas and you’ll get one answer: Sandringham. It’s the correct answer for the modern era, but it isn’t the only royal Christmas address that matters. Windsor Castle has its own festive history, stretching back roughly eight centuries, and it includes one of the most charming royal Christmas stories that rarely gets told.
A royal Christmas address since the 12th century
Windsor Castle’s connection to royal Christmas goes back much further than most people realise. Royal Christmases have been marked there since as far back as the 12th century, making it, by some distance, the older of the two great royal Christmas homes. Sandringham, by comparison, has only been a royal estate since 1862, when it was bought for the future Edward VII.
For centuries, Windsor was simply where the reigning monarch happened to be at Christmas, long before Sandringham existed as a royal option at all.
Victoria and Albert’s twenty Windsor Christmases
The clearest proof of Windsor’s earlier claim on royal Christmas comes from Queen Victoria herself. She and Prince Albert married in February 1840 and spent every single one of their twenty Christmases together at Windsor Castle, with gifts arranged on tables decorated in seasonal foliage and small individual trees for each family member, and presents exchanged on Christmas Eve in keeping with Albert’s own German tradition.
That run ended only with Albert’s death in 1861. Grieving, Victoria moved her own Christmases to Osborne House on the Isle of Wight instead, a shift that meant Windsor’s status as the fixed royal Christmas base was already broken decades before Sandringham was ever purchased. Far from Sandringham simply inheriting an unbroken Windsor tradition, there was an entire Osborne interlude in between.
The 1960s: a Windsor decade
Windsor had a real modern resurgence as a Christmas base during the 1960s, when Queen Elizabeth II’s children were young. Several Christmases in that decade were spent at Windsor rather than Sandringham, practical, family-driven choices rather than any formal change of tradition, but proof that Sandringham’s status as the fixed royal Christmas home is more recent, and more flexible, than it can appear from the outside.
The wartime pantomimes: Windsor’s best festive story
The real gem in Windsor’s Christmas history dates to the Second World War. From 1941 to 1945, young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret starred in a series of annual Christmas pantomimes staged at Windsor Castle, performed for an audience that included their parents, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother).
These weren’t private amusements for their own sake. The pantomimes raised money for the Royal Household Wool Fund, which supplied wool for knitting comforts sent to serving soldiers, a genuinely useful wartime effort, run by two children not yet in their teens, performed inside a castle that was, at the time, also a working wartime residence.
Christmas during the war years
The pantomimes sat alongside a much bigger shift in royal Christmas tradition happening at the same time. The outbreak of war in 1939 is what properly cemented the Christmas Broadcast as an annual fixture, no longer a novelty but a genuine tool for national morale, delivered every year through the hardest stretch of the century. George V and George VI otherwise mostly kept Christmas at Sandringham, but the war years pulled some of the family’s festive life toward Windsor instead, for reasons of both safety and practicality.
Windsor’s wartime Christmases, pantomimes included, capture something Sandringham’s more settled modern tradition doesn’t: a royal family adapting Christmas, in real time, to genuinely difficult circumstances.
Why Sandringham eventually won out
Sandringham’s rise to being the fixed royal Christmas address happened gradually rather than by any single decision, helped by its privacy, its Norfolk shooting estate, and simply the accumulated weight of decades of royal habit. Windsor never stopped being used for Christmas entirely, but it settled into its other seasonal role instead, with the family more often gathering there at Easter, while Sandringham took over the December calendar.
That’s really the shape of it: two great royal houses, one older Christmas history and one that became the tradition everyone now recognises.
What Windsor’s Christmas history says about the family
Windsor’s Christmas story is less polished than Sandringham’s. It has fewer fixed rituals and more moments shaped by whatever the decade actually required, from Victorian formality to a grieving Queen’s decision to leave altogether, to wartime necessity, to a 1960s young family’s practical choices. That messiness is, in its way, more revealing than a settled tradition would be.
Browse more of our Royal Places & Events stories for the history behind the palaces and estates that have shaped the modern monarchy.
Frequently asked questions
How long has Windsor Castle hosted royal Christmases?
Royal Christmases have been marked at Windsor Castle since as far back as the 12th century, making it a far older royal Christmas address than Sandringham, which only became a royal estate in 1862.
Did Queen Victoria spend Christmas at Windsor Castle?
Yes. She and Prince Albert spent every one of their twenty Christmases together at Windsor Castle between their 1840 marriage and Albert’s death in 1861, exchanging gifts on Christmas Eve in keeping with German tradition.
Where did the royal family spend Christmas after Prince Albert died?
Queen Victoria moved her Christmases to Osborne House on the Isle of Wight following Albert’s 1861 death, meaning Windsor’s run as the fixed royal Christmas base ended decades before Sandringham was purchased in 1862.
Did the royal family spend Christmas at Windsor in the 1960s?
Yes. During the 1960s, when Queen Elizabeth II’s children were young, several Christmases were spent at Windsor Castle rather than Sandringham.
What were the Windsor Castle Christmas pantomimes?
From 1941 to 1945, young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret starred in a series of annual Christmas pantomimes staged at Windsor Castle, watched by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, raising money for the Royal Household Wool Fund.
What was the Royal Household Wool Fund?
The Royal Household Wool Fund supplied wool for knitting comforts sent to British soldiers during the Second World War. The Windsor Castle pantomimes performed by the young princesses raised money for the fund.
Why did Sandringham become the main royal Christmas home instead of Windsor?
Sandringham’s rise as the fixed royal Christmas address happened gradually, helped by its privacy and its shooting estate, alongside decades of accumulated royal habit, while Windsor increasingly became associated with other times of year, particularly Easter.
Is Windsor Castle older than Sandringham as a royal residence?
Yes, considerably. Windsor’s royal Christmas history dates back to the 12th century, while Sandringham became a royal estate only in 1862.
Details of Windsor Castle’s Christmas history are drawn from royal.uk and widely published historical accounts of royal Christmases; described as of 2026.
