Meghan Markle's Christmas special has premiered on Netflix, with Britain's Duchess of Sussex revealing she puts a love letter inside the Christmas cracker she makes for her husband Prince Harry.
She urges people to try to make "every day" of December "special" as the year prepares to end, adding: "But don’t feel like you have to do it all."
She recommends adding wax seals to wrapped presents to elevate them, and letting tree ornaments "find their light" as she offers up tips for the festive season.
The 56-minute one-off episode follows the first two critically-savaged seasons of With Love, Meghan and comes after the Sussexes signed their new watered down, first look deal with the streaming giant in August.
Meghan reveals she loves Christmas trees, advent calendars and Yuletide wreaths – with trees allowing you to "really encapsulate your family story, really feel the passage of time and the different chapters of your life through the ornaments".
She dresses up in matching festive red pyjamas with her friends, and makes handmade personalised crackers, adding in a lavender roll-on scent for her four-year-old daughter Princess Lili, a tiny toy burger and fries for six-year-old Prince Archie, and a "little love letter" for Harry.
Meghan remarks: "Lili really likes trying to be a grown-up lady at the moment."
She adds: "My husband’s has a little love letter, a chocolate, a little hat", and she labels the cracker: "My Love" rather than: "Harry".
Of Archie, she says: "Now I’m on to Archie and I’m doing burgers and he loves the colour red."
Meghan also suggests "trying to really embrace and lean into making every day of that month special as you’re wrapping up a year.
"But don’t feel like you have to do it all. Just embrace the special touches that bring you joy."
The duchess meanwhile explains the idea of advent calendars as she puts tiny gifts into Archie and Lili’s named fabric pocket calendars, saying: "I wanted to do it for my own kids… All it’s really about is having a surprise and delight every single day for 24 days until you get to Christmas."
And she also adds in handwritten notes – which she refers to as "little findings" – for her children, saying: "I’m writing: 'I love you because you are so kind’ and: ‘I love you because you’re so brave’."
Archie and Lili do not appear in the episode.
But Harry, who featured briefly in the first season of With Love, Meghan but not the second, makes his cameo near the end, when he walks into the kitchen while Meghan and visiting restaurateur Tom Colicchio are cooking.
He greets the duchess with a kiss on the lips and says: "Hi guys. I smelled gumbo."
Meghan tells how her mother Doria Ragland makes gumbo – her Tennessee casserole of chicken, sausage, shrimp and spices – on Christmas Eve and "always saves a little portion on the side" for Harry without fish in it.
Harry tucks into the spicy dish, before cheekily telling Meghan her version is not as good as her mother’s, and laughing as he waits for her shocked reaction.
"I can feel it puncturing through the top of my head right now. It is delicious. I’m not so sure it’s as good as your mom’s, but it’s certainly close," he says.
An open-mouthed Meghan reacts, saying: "What? Oh my gosh!" as she smiles, adding: "My mom will love you for that. You know, what a good thing to say for your mother-in-law."
At the end of the segment, Meghan kisses Harry on the lips again and puts her arm around his neck as she tells her husband: "Thank you for coming."
In the final scene, Harry appears briefly, dressed in a zip top jumper, as Meghan, in a one-shoulder emerald green silk Galvan gown which she wore in a photoshoot for Variety magazine in 2022, welcomes the film crew who arrive, with some wearing headphones, mics and Christmas jumpers, for evening drinks in front of a crackling open fire and a festively decorated room to celebrate wrapping the filming.
Source: Press Association
