Meghan’s Christmas cracker love letter to Harry as holiday special hits Netflix

The Duchess of Sussex’s Christmas special has premiered on Netflix, with Meghan sharing the UK’s “sweet” tradition of pulling crackers and revealing she puts a love letter inside the one she makes for the Duke of Sussex.

Meghan 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. With Love, Meghan: Holiday Celebration aired on the same day the King and Queen are hosting the German state visit, and just hours after the Princess of Wales published a personal letter to guests attending her annual carol concert on Friday. In the letter, Kate describes how the Christmas season “invites us to remember the power of reaching out to one another with generosity of heart”. Meghan, who is estranged from her own father and has levelled a raft of accusations at the royals since quitting the monarchy, 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, who spent her first royal Christmas with the late Queen and the royal family at Sandringham in Norfolk in 2017 when she was engaged to Harry, tells of learning about the “connected and sweet” tradition of crossing arms to pull Christmas crackers together. “Living in the UK, it’s just such a part of … Christmas holidays, for sure,” she tells one of her guests, American restaurateur Will Guidara, as they prepare to craft crackers. “Typically, people cross arms and do it… yeah, so they sit around the table and they all pull at the same time. It actually does feel really connected and sweet. “The way that I really started to know them – they would always have almost a fortune cookie-size joke or riddle, and something sweet.” The Christmas cracker was invented by London-based confectioner and baker Tom Smith in the 1840s and inspired by the French bon bon – a sugared almond wrapped in a twist of tissue paper. The firm still holds the Royal Warrant for supplying Christmas crackers and wrapping paper to the King. Each year, the royals gather at Sandringham for a traditional roast on Christmas Day, pulling crackers at the start of the meal. The Sussexes joined the Windsors for Christmas in 2017 and 2018 but they spent 2019 in Canada before stepping down as senior working royals early in 2020 and moving to the US. They have not spent a Christmas at Sandringham since. 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.” Harry also comes face-to-face with a dish made up of all the things he does not like. Colicchio cooked his grandfather’s beet salad – a sentimental family dish the chef makes each Christmas Eve – made of beets, black olives, fennel, anchovies and pickled vegetables. As Meghan lists the ingredients, having previously revealed Harry “hates all those flavours”, the duke’s eyes widen and he says: “Oh wow. That’s like the anti-salad.” He later adds: “Me and the salad, we’re having like this sort of eye-off. That is amazing how there’s not many things in the world that I don’t like. They’re all in one bowl. I don’t know what would happen to me.” 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. In other parts of the episode, Meghan offers her advice on tree decorating, saying she strings the lights so the tree is “lit from within and on the border, right on the outside” – and “the same with ornaments, you want to find the placement for them where they’re gonna find their light”. And in a segment named Tips and Tricks for Festive Wrapping, Meghan recommends folding “outwardly” rather “inwardly”. She explains: “One technique that’s really fun is just the different way in which you’re folding the paper. If you fold it outwardly instead of inwardly, it creates a different world there.” The duchess speeds through the method, adding: “A little bow right there could be awfully darling.” Meghan also reveals how she loves to add a pre-prepared wax seal and makes sure the colour matches the wrapping paper for a “tone on tone” look. “It’s the tiniest detail that suddenly feels elevated,” she says. Meghan adds: “Another anomaly for people at the holidays is: how on earth to wrap a wine bottle?” She suggests the Japanese furoshiki method of using a scarf. And she makes a rectangular cracker out of paper for wrapping tricky shapes such as cuddly toys. The duchess also cracks a number of food-related jokes, saying: “Beets, beets, beets. Drop that beet,” and: “This feels like fondue. You’ve never heard anyone say fon-don’t”. Guests include “a new friend” – tennis player Naomi Osaka – for whom Meghan serves her “favourite go-to” crudite platter – this time made of green vegetables – and a warmed cider. The pair head to the craft barn to decorate Santa cookie plates and mugs with pen and paint, where Meghan confesses she is “painfully bad” at tennis, and also at throwing and catching. For a visit from her best friends Lindsay Jill Roth and Kelly Zajfen, Meghan wears red pyjamas, edged in white and embroidered with her name on the pocket, while she cooks and serves a festive brunch which the trio eat as they stand in the kitchen. “I love the tradition of a Christmas morning brunch. I do it every year with my family and I’ve already gotten a little head start – something sweet, something savoury,” the duchess says. As they later make Christmas wreaths, Roth tells Meghan: “I like how loose yours is. That looks great.” Meghan replies: “Well it’s just the beginning,” with Roth adding: “Yeah, but it’s fun.” The episode, which begins with Meghan skipping through a Christmas tree farm, sees the duchess make gougeres with cacio e pepe – French cheese puffs made with cheese and black pepper – a festive cinnamon star, tiny quiches, and “Reindeer chow” – a sweet treat renamed from one of Meghan’s childhood recipes called “puppy chow” which mixes melted chocolate, butter, vanilla, peanut butter, two cups of powdered sugar and an unnamed cereal. Meghan also speaks about the importance of not trying to make everything perfect, admitting: “I get so fussed about everything being perfect that you lose the magic that even happens in the mistakes.” And she shares her love of Christmas trees, revealing: “There’s just something about it that, in one area in your house, you’re able to really encapsulate your family story, really feel the passage of time and the different chapters of your life through the ornaments.”

Published: 03/12/2025 by Radio NewsHub