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Prince Harry, Meghan Markle's 'important' reason for spending Christmas at home in California revealed
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle reportedly prioritized their children when they decided to spend Christmas at home in California.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex enjoyed the holiday with son Prince Archie, 5, and daughter Princess Lilibet, 3, at their home in the exclusive enclave of Montecito.
According to royal biographer Ingrid Seward, the couple made the choice to stay home after declining an invitation to celebrate Christmas at Althorp House, the Northampton, U.K., estate owned by the late Princess Diana’s younger brother, Charles, Earl Spencer.
“Harry and Meghan were invited for Christmas at Althorp with thrice-married Uncle Charles, now Earl Spencer, but have decided to stay in California,” Seward told the Mirror. “Meghan says it’s important for her that Archie and Lilibet can have ‘connective memories’ of Thanksgiving and Christmas at home and enjoy the traditions like putting out ‘carrots for the reindeer.’”
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Prince Harry and Meghan Markle decided to spend Christmas at their California home to create new memories and traditions for their children. (Eric Charbonneau/Archewell Foundation via Getty Images)
Despite the rift between the Sussexes and the royal family, Harry and Earl Spencer have continued to share a close relationship.
Harry and Meghan have visited Althorp on multiple occasions over the past few years, and the duke’s uncle attended his nephew’s Invictus Games’ 10th anniversary service in London May 8.
“Meghan says it’s important for her that Archie and Lilibet can have ‘connective memories’ of Thanksgiving and Christmas at home and enjoy the traditions like putting out ‘carrots for the reindeer.’”
Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, was reportedly the only other family member to join the Sussexes for their quiet Christmas celebration.
The pair declined an invitation from Princess Diana’s brother, Charles Earl Spencer, to celebrate the holiday at Althorp in England. (Dominic Lipinski/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
Representatives for Harry and Megan did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
During a November interview with Marie Claire, Meghan gushed over her love for the holidays.
She noted that her children are now “3 and 5, so every year it gets better.”
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“At first, I think, as a mom with children, you’re just enjoying having them there, but they’re not understanding everything that’s happening yet,” the former “Suits” star said. “But now we’re at the age where I just can’t wait to see it through their lens every year.
“Every single holiday is a new adventure.”
On Dec. 16, Harry and Markle released their holiday card, which featured a grid of six photos. An accompanying message said, “On behalf of the office of Prince Harry and Meghan, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Archewell Productions and Archewell Foundation, we wish you a very happy holiday season and a joyful new year.”
Included in those six pictures was a rare glimpse of Archie and Lilibet. In the family photo, Harry is seen bending down to greet his daughter with a hug, and Markle is seen doing the same with Archie.
Harry and Meghan shared a rare glimpse of their children on their new holiday card. (Getty/Archewell )
Earlier this month, People magazine reported the Sussexes did not receive an invitation from the royal family to join them at the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk for their annual Christmas holiday.
Harry and Meghan haven’t spent Christmas at Sandringham with the royal family since 2018, the same year they were married.
On Christmas Day, King Charles III, 76, and wife Queen Camilla, 77, took part in the royal family’s traditional walk for morning mass at Sandringham’s St. Mary Magdalene Church.
They were joined by Charles’ son Prince William, 42, Kate Middleton, 42, and their children, Prince George, 11, Princess Charlotte, 9, and Prince Louis, 6.
Other royal family members in attendance included Princess Anne, the Princess Royal, 74; her daughter Zara Tindall, 43; and Mike Tindall, 46. Prince Edward, the Duke of Edinburgh, 60, and his wife Sophie, the Duchess of Edinburgh, 59, also attended the service.
The royal family celebrated Christmas at Sandringham. (Getty Images)
The year has been a tumultuous one for the royal family. In February, Buckingham Palace announced that Charles was being treated for cancer, though it was not specified which type. Earlier this year, the monarch was treated for an enlarged prostate.
In January, Kensington Palace announced Kate had planned abdominal surgery. She was out of sight for several months, sparking speculation about her health.
In March, Kate put the speculation to rest by announcing she had also been diagnosed with an undisclosed form of cancer.
In September, Kate announced she had completed chemotherapy treatment. In a video announcing her progress, she said the path to full recovery would be long, and she would take it day by day.
She said she would undertake some limited engagements through the end of the year.
Fox News Digital’s Brie Stimston and Janelle Ash contributed to this report.
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WASHINGTON (Gray DC) – For most kids, a birthday means cake, gifts and a reason to celebrate.
For more than a million children experiencing homelessness in America, it often means none of that.
Nonprofits across the country are throwing personalized parties for children in homeless shelters to make sure they feel special on their big day.
The Good Side’s National Correspondent Debra Alfarone takes us to a birthday party for Yalina.
Copyright 2026 Gray DC. All rights reserved.
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Mobile home residents in Bozeman, Montana, say they’re being forced to choose between paying rent and paying medical costs.Courtesy of Jered McCafferty
35-year-old Benjamin Moore has lived in Mountain Meadows Mobile Home Park, outside Bozeman, Montana, since he was 17. This month, for the first time, he’s withholding his rent.
On May 1, Moore received a rent bill for $947, up 11 percent from the month before, and the second hike in nine months—the product of the park’s sale to an undisclosed buyer.
Moore hung a sign on his trailer that says “RENT STRIKE.” He and his neighbors in Mountain Meadows and nearby King Arthur Park, organized with the citywide group Bozeman Tenants United, are collectively withholding over $50,000 a month from their landlord.
Historically, trailer parks have been a relatively affordable housing option—a third of trailer park residents in America live below the poverty line. But on average, their cost of living has risen 45 percent over the past decade. By unionizing, the Bozeman trailer park tenants believe they might be able to fight the most recent rent hike—especially given the state of their housing.
For years, tenants say, the maintenance hasn’t been attended to: tree limbs hang perilously over trailers, and water shutoffs are a regular occurrence. “I cannot recall a time in the past 20 years where we had three straight months of water and power working all day, every day,” Moore said.
Shauna Thompson, another resident, calls the water “atrocious…like a Milky Way, like you’re drinking skim milk. It’s very nasty and turned off all the time, without any notice.” And tenants allege that they’ve experienced retribution for maintenance requests, punitive eviction attempts, and unsafe conditions.
“It’s really hard on people here,” Moore said. Some residents are “already paying their entire Social Security check for rent. It’s a very poor neighborhood. We’ve got old folks. We’ve got young families. We’ve got working-class people who can’t afford anything else.”
For the past four decades, a group called Oakland Properties has owned both trailer parks. When they learned about the sale, tenants were scared that their parks would be bulldozed, or that their rent would be increased even further, forcing them to move.
The tenants attempted to buy the parks themselves, but were decisively outbid. The winning bidder demanded an NDA. The transaction should be finalized next month, park owner Gary Oakland said, but residents still don’t know who’s going to own the land they live on.
This month’s rent hike, Oakland acknowledged, was “part and parcel” of the sale. But for tenants, it’s a catastrophe. On top of the $947 lot rent—more than double the national average—many residents also pay off home loans on their trailers, as well as insurance and utilities costs.
Oakland calls claims of broken utilities “nonsense”: “If it was such a bad place to live, why would the homes be selling for such high dollars?” he said. The rent strike, Oakland points out, is “just a group of people not paying their rent.”
Some people are rationing their medication to make ends meet, Moore said. “There’s one person who canceled Life Alert. It’s either Life Alert or rent, and if you don’t pay rent, they evict you and throw you in the streets.”
Tenant organizers across the nation have found a foothold in recent years organizing against individual landlords, and Bozeman’s tenant union, situated in one of the fastest-growing communities in the state, is no exception. Tenant unions from Los Angeles to Kansas City to New York have organized to win rent freezes, maintenance, and security in their homes.
Mobile home parks—increasingly private-equity-owned and uniquely at-risk in the face of climate disasters—are organizing, too: a group of trailer park residents in Columbia, Missouri, unionized in February. In Montana, as Rebecca Burns recently wrote for In These Times, mobile homes were already once a site of tenant organizing: buoyed by the state’s miners unions, the first Bozeman-area mobile home tenants’ union won an agreement with their landlord in 1978.
Oakland says park residents “have been terrorized by the union,” and plans to evict the strikers. The strikers say they’ve retained a lawyer and will fight to stay in their homes.
“I wish none of this was happening,” Moore said. “Your utilities should work. Your place should be safe. You should be able to get in and out of it. These are the absolute basics, and they just haven’t kept them up. And if you call them on it, they threaten you.”
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