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As Prince Louis approaches his eighth birthday, the royal family are preparing to mark the momentous occasion with their traditional festivities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Princess Catherine has previously disclosed several birthday customs the family observe, most notably that she regularly stays up until midnight baking birthday cakes for her children’s special days.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Yet there is one playful tradition, initiated by Princess Diana, which Prince William<\/a> finds particularly testing each year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The practice began when Princess Diana would present the children of her close friend Julia Samuel with noisy, difficult-to-assemble gifts \u2014 simultaneously thrilling the youngsters while driving their parents to distraction.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Julia, who serves as one of Prince George’s seven godparents, has carried on this tradition with the Wales family, leaving Prince William to tackle the maddening task year after year, reports the Liverpool Echo<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Samuel first spoke about the entertaining custom during her appearance on the podcast How to Fail with Elizabeth Day in a 2020 episode marking what would have been Diana’s 59th birthday, explaining: “I do to George what [Diana] did to us, which is give impossible toys that are really noisy and take a lot of making.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n “William then has to spend days putting them together. And then put all the machinery together, and it makes awful tooting noises and lights flashing and all of that.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n She explained the rest of the family gets great entertainment from watching William struggle with building the gifts, especially “cheeky” George. She mentioned it “makes [her] laugh, and it makes George laugh.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When speaking about her royal godson George, Julia characterised him as “amazing”, indicating her dear friend Diana would have adored him immensely.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n