Inside the Royal Family’s Christmas Gift Exchange (The Sillier, the Better!)

What do you get a royal who has everything? Something silly.

“The crazier and the more quirky is what they love,” former royal chef Darren McGrady, who served the family during the holidays at Sandringham, has told PEOPLE.

Gathering at the grand house, the royals follow the German tradition of exchanging gifts on Christmas Eve. But what is likely not from Germany is the practice of laying out all the presents on long trestle tables set up in the main hall. There, each member of the family is faced with a pile of presents.

Prince Harry lifted the lid on the activity in his 2023 memoir, Spare. At Sandringham House, there was “a long table covered with white cloth and white name cards,” he wrote. “By custom, at the start of the night, each of us located our place, stood before our mound of presents. Then suddenly, everyone began opening at the same time. A free-for-all, with scores of family members talking at once and pulling at bows and tearing at wrapping paper.”

One year, Prince Harry reportedly gave his grandmother Queen Elizabeth a Big Mouth Bill Bass singing fish that played a tune and wiggled. Author Andrew Morton wrote in Meghan: A Hollywood Princess, that the late Queen kept it on the piano in her study at Balmoral Castle.

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For his wife Meghan Markle, it was a special piece of cutlery for her brother-in-law Prince William and Kate Middleton in the Christmas they all spent on the estate at Sandringham in 2018.

“Meghan’s biggest challenge was finding the perfect novelty gifts to amuse her new extended family,” authors Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand wrote in Finding Freedom. “At least one of her gifts was a huge hit: a spoon for William that had ‘cereal killer’ embossed on the shallow bowl end of the utensil.”

Harry was on the receiving end of an unusual memento from his great aunt, the late Princess Margaret, who was the sister of Queen Elizabeth.

According to his book, Harry called over and thanked the woman he called Aunt Margo, and he recalled her saying that “it wasn’t just any biro, she pointed out. It had a tiny rubber fish wrapped around it. I said: ‘Oh. A fish biro! Okay.’ ”

Mike Tindall, who is married to Zara, a cousin of Prince William and Prince Harry, joked one year that all his toddler Lucas wanted was a bag of frozen peas! Speaking to his The Good, The Bag & The Rugby podcast co-host and then new dad James Haskell, who’d welcomed a baby girl, Tindall recommended he “just get her a bag with frozen peas ’cause that’s all Lucas wants. A bag of frozen peas, pour it out on the floor.”

As Prince William and Kate joined King Charles and most of the royals for the traditions at Sandringham, Norfolk, Harry and Meghan and their two children, Prince Archie, 6, and Princess Lilibet, 4, spent the holidays at their home at Montecito, California.