What does the person who has everything convince you to buy the person who wishes they, too, had everything? Why, the As Ever advent calendar, of course!
A “steal” at £112, Meghan Markle’s latest grift – sorry, I mean gift – to the world is 24 chocolates, which works out at just £4.67 each. For the same price, you could get 13 Freddos every day of December, but don’t let me put you off.
If you’re dead set on a sugar hit sponsored by high-end LA chocolatier Compartes and packaging “thoughtfully inspired” by the garden of the Sussexes’s Montecito home – yes, the same Montecito home they’ve since swapped for the Cotswolds – then who am I to be Ebenezer Scrooge?
The same can’t be said of actual priests who have publicly bah-humbugged Meghan’s confectionary choices. As the Anglican vicar Reverend Daniel French pointed out (unwittingly being dragged into a social media priest pile-on in the process), it might be nice to put your hard-earned advent cash towards a charity chocolate calendar, instead – like a Fairtrade one by the Leprosy Mission, which costs about £6. Or, if you’re desperate to part with £112, you could buy 18 of them and hand them out. You do you.
Because sure, each of Meghan’s chocolates might be decorated with numbers painted in edible gold, in the Duchess’s very own handwriting. And fine, they might sound delicious, seeing as they come in flavours such as strawberry, blackberry and orange marmalade – one also bears Meghan’s patented (if widely mocked) “flower sprinkles” – but they don’t help people with leprosy, do they? No, they do not.
And while Meghan’s certainly not the only one capitalising on a luxe, commercial Christmas – there’s a Dior advent calendar which costs £6,500 (I know); or the traditional Liberty one, a relative steal at £285; or a pricey Sephora calendar for teens at £235 – I do have to admit I’m disappointed.
I was hopeful that following their shock return from the US in August, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex would have changed. That they’d have become less focused on making money; a little less “Netflix reality show deal”, and a lot less “As Ever”.
I’d foolishly hoped that coming back to Britain would, frankly, knock some sense into them. That having to do all the usual, everyday British things – like joining Archie and Lilibet’s school PTA, or running out of custard creams and having to pop to the garage to get some more – would gift them some humility.
They had every chance, after all, with this sudden and bashful return to the Royal Family fold. Prince Harry, we are told, has to some extent reconciled with his dad – King Charles hosted a private tea for him and Meghan back in July, following a private meeting with his son the September before. The Prince himself told Canadian network CTV that it was “great to be back on British soil” after six years in the US.
“The kids are happy in school and it gives me a chance to be able to really focus on the Invictus Games in Birmingham in July next year,” he said.
And while he may have a mountain to climb when it comes to rebuilding his relationship with his brother, Prince William, there was still a certain sense that attitudes towards Harry and Meghan were softening, to some extent; a palpable, public shrug of the shoulders from the rest of us and a very British desire to “make do”. And an earnest hope that now they’ve returned from the “California experiment” and have put the kids in school, we might see Harry and Meghan 2.0: older, wiser and more focused on the things that really matter.
After all, this week they will be making a joint public appearance in Nottingham, dropping into three charities supporting young people and working to stop food poverty. That kind of earnest engagement with normal people around the UK is the sort of thing that will turn that vague sense of goodwill into something concrete and lasting. It took a hard heart not to sympathise with Harry when he told Nato’s military committee a couple of weeks ago that he had lost his “purpose and identity” on leaving the army too.
Perhaps it was naive, but I had hoped that the years of ostracisation following those palace racism claims, the eschewing of the royal titles, the standing down as “working royals” and the widely publicised rift between brothers, fathers and sons – and the media – might have taught them something about putting family, rather than business, first.
Instead, Meghan’s eye-wateringly pricey advent calendar is a sad reminder of everything that has happened since they left the UK in the first place: the jams, the reality series, the podcasts.
Of course, being outside of the Royal Family, they need to make their own money. But after the charity visits and snapshots of life in the Cotswolds, this advent calendar was a reminder of the cold truth: the Sussexes have commodified their lives to such a dramatic extent that they can’t just drop it, even though they’re back on Harry’s home soil.
And in the end, it’s a gift-wrapped miniature of what their life on the outside actually entails: a fancy, wrapped box of overpriced chocolates, dressed up as aspiration, with nothing much of value on the inside.