The Royal Family reportedly held a New Year game that delighted the late Queen Elizabeth II.(Image: Neil Mockford/Getty Images)
With only hours left until we enter into 2026, many Brits have traditions that they like to uphold as they enter into the new year. While it is usual for your ‘first footer’ to bring gifts and luck to your home, others may get more odd looks as they scarf down 12 grapes under a table at the bells.
While everyone tries to uphold their own cultural and personal traditions, it seems that the Royal Family also had a fun way to start off the beginning of a new year. While the late Queen Elizabeth II was noted to love this family game, a royal expert has said that it did leave one or two family members ‘huffy’ throughout the years.
According to royal author Brian Hoey, Queen Elizabeth loved playing a game called ‘lucky dip’. In his book ‘At Home with the Queen’, he explained that this game involved her nearest and dearest pulling out predictions for the year to come.
This game allegedly began with a member of staff bringing in a tub that was filled with sawdust and hidden pieces of paper. On each piece of paper was a different prediction for the new year.
The book went on to add: “‘Each member of the Royal Family takes a lucky dip and if their particular forecast is not very favourable the poor footman gets the blame.” Now while these predictions were written by the staff, Hoey adds that they had to first be approved by the Queen and Prince Phillip.
Queen Elizabeth allegedly loved to hold a game called ‘lucky dip’ every New Year.(Image: Mark Cuthbert/Getty Images)
He went on to explain: “Each member of the family picks out an envelope and reads out their Âprediction to the rest of the room. They’re meant to be funny but like all the family’s humour there’s an element of score settling and getting even to them.
“They’re usually taken in good humour but some people can get quite huffy if they feel they’re being got at.” However, this isn’t the only association that the royal family has with superstitions and fortune telling.
According to Woman and Home, the UK first became obsessed with reading their star signs due to Princess Margaret. In 1930, when the Queen’s younger sister was born, the Sunday Express commissioned an astrologer to predict her future.
This was done by astrologer R.H. Naylor, who essentially created the template of modern astrology. Instead of focusing on individual birthdays, Naylor created predictions on the 12 sun star signs and attributed personality traits to people based on the month they were born in.
In his column ‘What the Stars Foretell for the New Princess’, Naylor hypothesised that Margaret would have an “eventful life”, reports the Independent. This ‘fortune telling’ was published three days after the Princess’ birth on August 24, 1930 – making her a Leo.
Naylor also predicted that “events of tremendous importance to the royal family and the nation will come about near her seventh year.”
While it was a year off, this important event could signify when King Edward VIII abdicated from the throne in 1936 when Margaret was six-years-old.
In addition to the late Queen’s unusual New Year’s game, she was also known to stay up until midnight to ring in the new year.
Her former private secretary, Sir William Heseltine, described the Queen as somewhat of a night owl and that “nobody felt it right to go to bed before the Queen did.”
However, not everyone was as keen to stay up until the late hours of the evening, as Sir William added that Princess Diana found them to be “agony”.
According to the Business Insider, he said: “There’d be an hour or so in the sitting room of everyone sitting around making conversation and Diana was driven to such extremes that she’d excuse herself and go to bed, which was thought to be rather bad form, going to bed before the Queen.”