This Is What The Queen Gives Her 1500 Employees For Christmas

If you work for the Queen, there’s no doubt that you look forward to Christmas.

Decorations deck the palace, delicious smells emanate from the kitchens and a packed Royal social schedule means that the Royal staff are kept on their toes.

And at the end of December, the Royal staff breathe a sigh of relief that they’ve made it through the month. They then have something rather special to look forward to – a Christmas present from the Queen.

The monarch gives the same gift every year: a scrumptious Christmas pudding.

It’s the perfect gift. Traditional, celebratory but not showy, extremely British, and of course, delicious.

The palace revealed the tradition, which was started by the Queen’s grandfather, King George V and continued by her father, King George VI.

Every pudding is accompanied by a greeting card from the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, and they are paid for by herself through the Privy Purse.

The Royal family spend Christmas at Sandringham, pictured

Around 1,500 people can expect to receive a pudding, including staff in the Court Post Office and the Palace police.

No one’s quite sure where the puddings are from. The Daily Mail writes that the Royals once ordered the desserts from traditional British retailers such as Fortnum & Mason and Harrods, but that they now prefer to buy them from ‘more ordinary retailers’.

Hello! claims that the Queen bought this year’s pudding presents from Tesco – the Tesco’s Finest Matured Christmas Pudding, to be exact.

We’d be thrilled to find one of those under our tree with a tag from the Queen.

Other Royal Christmas traditions include giving a Christmas tree to Westminster Abbey, St Paul’s Cathedral, St Giles’ Cathedral and the Canongate Kirk in Edinburgh, as well as schools in the Sandringham area, where the Royals spend Christmas. All members of the Royal Household can also expect to receive Christmas presents from the Queen.

Merry Christmas, ma’am!

About the author

Alice Johnston

Food Editor

Alice is always planning her next meal. She studied English at the University of Bristol before getting her Master’s in newspaper journalism from City University London. She worked on Femail at Mail Online for 18 months writing about lifestyle and food and has also worked at Metro.co.uk, The Guardian, Mumsnet and The Sun. After starting at Culture Trip as a Social Content Producer writing travel and lifestyle stories, she was promoted to the role of Food Editor and now specialises in culinary culture, trends and social issues around food. When she’s not writing, eating or travelling, she can be found cooking overly elaborate dinners, reading cookbooks in bed or playing with her cat, Orlando. Her favourite foods include fishfinger sandwiches, burnt caramel panna cotta, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and oysters.