Princess Diana's first Christmas with the Royal Family in 1981 wasn't exactly the cozy family gathering she might have hoped for. The royals' unique holiday traditions— particularly their fondness for "silly gag gifts"—left the young princess feeling more than a little uncomfortable, especially when it came to one surprising present from her sister-in-law, Princess Anne.
Diana, already struggling with the suffocating protocol of royal life, found herself thrust into a world of complicated rules that left her feeling lost and lonely. "It was fairly fraught," she told royal biographer Andrew Morton, author of Diana: Her True Story—In Her Own Words, when describing royal Christmas celebrations.
