notes<\/a>, \u201cIn 1917, there was a radical change, when George V specifically adopted Windsor, not only as the name of the ‘House’ or dynasty, but also as the surname of his family. The family name was changed as a result of anti-German feeling during the First World War, and the name Windsor was adopted after the Castle of the same name.\u201d<\/p>\nDespite the change in name, German Christmas traditions have endured.<\/p>\n\n<\/section>\n\n
<\/span><\/p>\n\n
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Emily Burack (she\/her) is the Senior News Editor for Town & Country, where she covers entertainment, celebrities, the royals, and a wide range of other topics. Before joining T&C, she was the deputy managing editor at Hey Alma, a Jewish culture site. Follow her @emburack on Twitter and Instagram.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.townandcountrymag.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As families around the world prepare to celebrate Christmas tomorrow, the British royals will be exchanging gifts tonight, on Christmas Eve. As Prince Harry explained in his memoir, Spare, it is \u201ca German tradition that survived the anglicizing of the family surname from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor.\u201d In Germany, Christmas Eve (Heiliger Abend) is when the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1965632,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[274717,422522,285977,285684,422521],"class_list":["post-2189084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-content-type-news","tag-contentid-9d7c84a8-b4f1-481e-a37a-9f63e49179d2","tag-displaytype-standard-article","tag-locale-us","tag-shorttitle-why-the-royals-open-presents-on-christmas-eve"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Taylor-Swift-on-What-Happened-Moments-Before-She-Met-Prince.file.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2189084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2189084"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2189084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2189085,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2189084\/revisions\/2189085"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1965632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2189084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2189084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2189084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}