Prince Harry's past Christmases have involved major drama not only relating to his rift with the royals, but also two tours of Afghanistan.
Many people will find their holiday season populated by conflict, but in the past that has meant literal war for the Duke of Sussex.
In fact, Harry has experienced an unusually large number of major life events around Christmas time—including his decision to quit the palace for a new life in North America.
And the prince, who turned 40 in September, wrote about some of those irreversible moments in his book Spare.
Prince Harry's Christmas 2002
Perhaps the saddest came in 2002 when he lost his childhood best friend from Ludgrove Prep School, Henry van Straubenzee, who died in a car crash aged 18.
Harry wrote about the parallels with the death of his mother five years earlier in passages in his book: "Two months later, a Sunday morning—just before Christmas 2002.
"The news must have come in the form of a phone call, though I only dimly recall holding the phone, hearing the words. Henners and another boy, leaving a party near Ludgrove, drove into a tree.
"Though the call's a blur, I vividly remember my reaction. Same as when Pa told me about Mummy. Right...so Henners was in an accident. 'But he's in hospital, right? He's going to be OK?'
"'No, he wasn't.' And the other boy, the driver, had been critically injured. Willy and I went to the funeral."
Harry's Christmas in 2007
Five years later and Prince Harry was in the middle of his first tour of Afghanistan for the festive period when, on Christmas Eve, he got news that he was to be moved to a new operating base.
"Finally, on Christmas Eve 2007, my request was approved," he wrote. "I was to replace an outgoing FAC [Forward Air Controller] at Forward Operating Base Delhi, which was inside an abandoned Garmsir school."
It was not long before he was ordering in a bomb strike on a Taliban bunker, though the prince described feeling let down when he was told the bomb he had requested for the task was too big.
"I felt strongly that I was right, and I wanted to argue, but I was new and lacked self-confidence," he wrote. "This was my first airstrike. So I just said: 'Roger that.'
"New Year's Eve. I held the F-15s at bay, about eight kilometers, so the noise of their engines wouldn't spook the targets. When conditions looked to be just right, all calm, I summoned them.
"'Widow Six Seven, we're in hot.' 'Dude Zero One, Dude Zero Two, you're cleared hot.' 'Cleared hot.'
"They went streaking towards the target. On my screen I watched the pilot's crosshair settle over the bunker. One second. Two.
"White flash. Loud bang. The wall of the ops room shuddered. Dust and pieces of stone rained down from the ceiling."
"Moments later," he continued, "just as I'd feared, Taliban came running out of the trench. I groaned at my Rover, then stomped outside."
That Christmas was not without its celebrations though, as Harry was with the revered Gurkhas—Nepalese soldiers who fight for the British Army.
"I remember one day hearing rotors overhead," he wrote. "I looked up. Everyone on the base looked up. A chopper slowly descending. And hanging from the skids, wrapped in a net, was a goat. Christmas present for the Gurkhas."
Christmas 2012
Prince Harry's second tour of Afghanistan saw him serve as co-pilot gunner of an Apache helicopter over Christmas in Helmand Province.
"As my tour neared its end, around Christmas 2012," he wrote, "I had questions and qualms about the war, but none of these was moral.
"I still believed in the Mission, and the only shots I thought twice about were the ones I hadn't taken.
"For instance, the night we were called in to help some Gurkhas. They were pinned down by a nest of Taliban fighters, and when we arrived there was a breakdown in communications, so we simply weren't able to help.
"It haunts me still: hearing my Gurkha brothers calling out on the radio, remembering every Gurkha I'd known and loved, being prevented from doing anything."
Christmas 2019
Seven years later, Harry was long out of the army and three years into his relationship with Meghan, with one foot out the palace door.
The relationship with William and Kate had already disintegrated, as well as with a number of the staff at Kensington Palace, and tensions with media had been in overdrive.
In that context, Harry and Meghan decided to relocate to North America for Thanksgiving and stayed on for Christmas and New Year.
They spent the time working on a plan to re-organize their working lives in order to spend more time outside Britain, though the conflict with the royals flared so rapidly that it quickly became a move to live full time in America.
"I'd run the idea by Granny once before," Harry wrote. "She'd even signed off on it. And I'd run it by Pa, at Clarence House, the Wasp present.
"He told me to put it in writing, which I'd done immediately. Within a few days it was in all the papers and caused a huge stink.
"So now, at the end of December 2019, when I was chatting with Pa on the phone, saying we were more serious than ever about spending part of the year away from Britain, I wasn't having it when he said that I must write it down."
Christmas 2022
December 2022 saw the release of Harry and Meghan's first Netflix project, their six-part biopic Harry & Meghan.
The show flew to the top of the Netflix charts, making it a roaring commercial success, but triggered a mixed response from U.S. reviewers and opprobrium in Britain.
One headline in Variety on December 19 read "It's Well Past Time for Harry and Meghan 2.0," in what proved to be a canary in the coal mine moment for the couple.
Christmas, though, was in reality the calm before the storm that followed the release of Spare on January 10, 2023.
The book sparked outrage over the revelation of royal family secrets, including private conversations involving Prince William, Princess Kate and King Charles III.
However, there was also ridicule over his decision to include passages describing the experience of getting frostbite on his penis and using his mother's favorite brand of lip cream to soothe the pain.
In the aftermath, their U.S. popularity plummeted and Harry became a target for late-night comedy sketches.
Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on X, formerly Twitter, at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
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