Queen opens festive season as children gather to decorate Christmas tree at Clarence House

It was, perhaps, just the antidote the Royal family needed, the calm before the storm.

The Queen Consort declared the festive season officially underway on Wednesday as she threw open the doors of Clarence House to seriously ill children and their families to help decorate the Christmas tree.

The annual engagement has become one of the Royal’s favourite and most poignant Christmas traditions.

This year, it fell on the eve of the release of the Duke and Duchess of Sussexes’ Netflix documentary, which is unlikely to prove pleasant viewing for the Royal family.

However, Prince Harry’s nearest and dearest are determined to rise above it all and get on with the day job.

And that they did, with Camilla declaring: “It’s always a treat for me to start the Christmas season here. It literally kicks it off for us.”

Meanwhile, the King attended a reception for the founders of Business in the Community, an organisation dedicated to responsible business and workplace racial equality, at Westminster Hall.

As founding patron, he urged them to continue their efforts to create a fairer workplace.

It was the 16th year that his wife had hosted the Christmas tree event but her first as Queen Consort.

However, it remained reassuringly familiar, with twinkling lights, carols performed by the Band of the Welsh Guards and a visit from two reindeer, before the children sat down to a lunch of sausages and mash.

There was even an equerry in bearskin and full Guards uniform using the tip of his sword to lift decorations onto the tree.

As per tradition, children supported by two charities, Helen & Douglas House and Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Children’s Charity, were invited to help decorate the Royal Christmas tree at the King and Queen Consort’s London residence.

Eleven children, accompanied by their parents and representatives from the two charities, looked on in wonder when the doors of the morning room were opened up to reveal the towering tree.

With assistant equerry, Captain Ed Andersen, on hand, the children got to work. Some went back and forth several times with decorations as five musicians from the Band of the Welsh Guards played Christmas carols.

Among them was Gwendolyn Dainty, eight, who has cerebral palsy, and wore a green dress and tiara.

Her mother, Kieri Dainty from Burford, Oxfordshire, said: “For her this is magical.

“A Queen, Christmas trees, Father Christmas and a palace. It doesn’t get much better than that.”

She said she was grateful for the brief respite, adding: “Caring is a full-time job.”

As the children tucked into lunch, the man in red appeared.

“Cookies! We are lucky,” an excited Father Christmas said to Royal aides nearby. “I would dive in there but I’m not going to before the children have had one at least.”

Two of his reindeer, Dancer and Blitzen, brought into London from Stroud, Gloucestershire, were outside waiting for the children in the Royal garden.

The young guests, joined by the Queen Consort, happily fed them with lichen. “That’s it. Ooh, you’re good at this,” Blitzen’s handler, Karen Perring, told the children while fielding questions from parents. “Rudolph is still in the North Pole,” she said.

The Queen Consort has been patron of Helen & Douglas House, a charity based in the Thames Valley, since 2007 and of Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Children’s Charity since 2017.

Felicity Dhal, widow of the children’s author and charity founder, said: “She is the most amazing woman. I just think she is unbelievable. It’s exhausting but she does it with such grace.”

Mrs Dahl, 83, who founded the charity in 1991 shortly after her husband’s death in November 1990, expressed her pride in her charity’s nurses and other staff and the support it has received from Camilla at the Christmas event.

She said: “I just think it is one of the most delightful events that anyone could be privileged to come to.”

She added: “I just wish my husband was here because, you know, his passion was medicine. If he hadn’t been a writer he’d have been a doctor.

“We lost two children. We had a lot of connections: my mother was a nurse; my father was a heart surgeon, and I think nurses are the most important people in the medical world.”

Clare Periton, chief executive of Helen & Douglas House, has been coming to Clarence House for several years but admitted that Camilla’s elevation to Queen Consort had made the day even more exciting.

“I’ve been telling everyone I’m going to London to see the Queen,” she said.