Behind the gilded gates of Sandringham, where chandeliers sparkle and portraits of ancestors gaze down from paneled walls, the British royal family gathers each New Year’s Eve for a tradition that might surprise you one involving a humble tub, a pile of sawdust, and whispered hopes for the year ahead.
While the world has grown familiar with the royal family’s Christmas rituals at their Norfolk estate—the synchronized church walk, the formal lunch, the afternoon of Queen Elizabeth’s televised address their New Year’s Eve celebration has remained something of a secret, tucked away from public view like a cherished family recipe.
But this tradition, as The Mirror reveals, makes the royals “all the more relatable.” It’s called Lucky Dip, and it’s charmingly ordinary.
Picture this: King Charles and Queen Camilla, hosts of the evening’s festivities, gather their family in one of Sandringham’s grand rooms. In the center sits an unremarkable tub filled with sawdust hardly the stuff of royal pomp. Hidden throughout are folded pieces of paper, each containing a secret message.
Royal biographer Brian Hoey described the scene in his book At Home With the Queen: participants write down their predictions for the coming year, then each player reaches into the sawdust, retrieves a slip of paper, and reads the prophecy aloud. Laughter, groans, and knowing glances inevitably follow as fortunes silly or sincere are revealed.
What makes this tradition particularly endearing is that it isn’t uniquely royal at all. Families across the United Kingdom play the same game every New Year’s Eve, The Mirror notes. Often, they hide small gifts in the sawdust—a coin for good luck, a trinket for fortune, small treasures to discover.
But the royals, who famously prefer gag gifts over lavish presents even at Christmas, take a different approach. Instead of coins or trinkets, they hide only their written wishes—hopes and dreams for the twelve months ahead. “Which comes across as very endearing,” The Mirror observed. Even monarchs, it seems, make wishes like the rest of us.
A Family Divided by Tradition
While the senior royals ring in the new year at Sandringham, Prince William, Kate Middleton, and their children often slip away after Christmas to spend New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day with Kate’s parents, Carole and Michael Middleton. It’s a quieter celebration, a chance to reconnect with the family that raised the future Queen Consort away from the weight of crowns and protocol.
For those who remain at Sandringham, New Year’s Day begins as many royal occasions do with church. A morning mass is held at St. Mary Magdalene Church, the same chapel where the family walks together each Christmas morning, their coats buttoned against the winter chill, their breaths visible in the crisp Norfolk air.
After prayers and hymns, the day unfolds in quintessentially country pursuits: horseback riding across the sprawling grounds, pheasant shooting in the nearby fields, bracing walks through frost-tipped landscapes. It’s a day of fresh air and family, tradition and renewal.
And somewhere in a corner of Sandringham, perhaps, sits an empty tub still dusted with sawdust a reminder that even royals reach into the unknown, hoping to pull out something good.
Photos credits: Bestimage