Princess Diana Broke Royal Christmas Tradition By Doing THIS
Princess Diana broke royal protocols since she became part of the royal family, and she also broke one tradition during her first royal Christmas.
In 1981, Princess Diana officially became a member of the royal family after marrying Prince Charles. As someone new to the family, she had to make several adjustments to learn and follow the monarchy's traditions.
When she became a royal, Queen Elizabeth II and the members of the royal family already started gathering at Sandringham estate, where they celebrate Christmas Eve. Prince Philip, who supervised the parties in the past years before his death, also initially set the rule that all gifts must be funny.
Unfortunately, the Princess of Wales reportedly did not get the memo about that rule at all. Instead, she bought Princess Anne a cashmere sweater while the sister-in-law gave her a toilet paper cover.
Fortunately, the mistake was not massive at all that she learned from her faux pas the following year. After finding out about the rule, she gave a leopard-print bath mat to Fergie Ferguson in 1982.
Princess Diana Broke More Rules
Aside from the Christmas tradition, the royal princess broke several protocols before and after the Christmas of 1981.
During her royal wedding to Prince Charles, she omitted the word "obey" when she recited her wedding vows. All royal brides are expected to say they will obey their husbands, but she said she would "love him, comfort him, honor him, and keep him, in sickness and in health" instead.
The original phrase from the 1662 Anglican Book of Common Prayer includes that word, so even Queen Elizabeth II said that word despite the fact that it would be impossible once she became Queen.
Still, both Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton followed in her footsteps, omitting "obey" in their wedding vows.
In addition, she also went beyond the royal protocol in a good way when she involved herself during the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In 1987, she opened the first HIV/AIDs clinic in London when the sexually transmitted virus became a global health crisis. At that time, she was famously photographed shaking hands with an AIDs patient to stop the misinformation.
"HIV does not make people dangerous to know, so you can shake their hands and give them a hug, heaven knows, they need it," she said in 1987.
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