Yes, it's Brimming with Nonsense, Extreme Hosting and Self-Help Jargon. Yet I Truly Adore Meghan's Holiday Special.
No concerned with the season, it's always open season for criticism on the Duchess of Sussex's televisual offering, With Love, Meghan. Reviewers, expert and amateur alike, have hardly ever agreed so completely as when gleefully ripping the lifestyle show's earlier episodes to pieces. The general consensus seemed to be a greater royal outrage had never been witnessed than the now-infamous pretzel re-packaging incident.
Currently, as a festive rebel, she is back once again with a "Festive Special" (or a Christmas special). Yet now, it's different. The usual elements we've come to expect – meaningless jargon salads, intense hospitality – remain, but set of a holiday show, suddenly it all makes sense. The puzzle has come perfectly; it's a flawless festive blizzard.
By this point, Meghan is like the quirky relative at the typical holiday get-together – providing unsolicited, unnecessary advice, and contributing the odd random outburst. ("I love spinach!" … "A tradition has to have a beginning." … "A tree is part of my memory and love of the holiday season.") She's an interesting figure, but her presence is familiar and oddly reassuring. And she appears happy enough; she's not doing any harm.
She understands her each tiny facial movement, utterance and glance will be analyzed and judged, but still appears unburdened and remarkably at ease.
Perhaps this is the only time in history where that clichéd phrase – "Ignore them, they're just jealous" – might be true. Because, you know what?, each element in Meghan's Holiday Celebration is charming. Yes, it's all cringily ultra-extra, silliness and extravagant – but is that not just what Christmas is for? And the advice she gives might be laughable, but the walk she's walking seems authentically beautifully curated.
Anything she attempts, she accomplishes with panache. Her cooking looks delicious, the holiday arrangement she creates is gorgeous, her gifts are nearly too beautiful to open. Not a single thing is average or aesthetically displeasing – including the way she fastens her kitchen garment is artful and chic. She doesn't bung a meal in the oven, it "has a moment", and she wraps gift paper like an origami guru. She also seems to be genuinely relishing herself the entire time. How could any hate-watcher not be won over, bursting with seasonal cheer and left with a intense desire for crafted festive snaps or a vegetable display where greens is organized in the form of a festive circle?
Meghan had a career in acting for a living, of course, but nonetheless, after the intensity of scrutiny she has weathered from the moment she became involved with Prince Harry, a theoretical combination of acting royalty would find it hard to appear this genuinely. Her refusal to alter or even moderate her shtick, regardless of it being so persistently, widely parodied, is weirdly comforting. In our unpredictable world, here is one thing we can count on: Meghan will stay true to form, whatever happens. We will forever know where we are with her.
If you're still not buying her brand, a thought that will undoubtedly come as a relief: you don't have to. We don't have mandatory conscription anymore, and were it to return, it would be doubtful to include viewing With Love, Meghan: Holiday Celebration. If, conversely, you willingly check it out and are gripped with envy about her picture-perfect Christmas, all is not lost either. Be you a duchess or a data administrator, hardly any child completely grasps the dedication and labor their parent does in the holiday season. So you can console yourself by imagining Archie and Lilibet's faces when they unfold a handwritten message that says, 'I love you because you are brave,' from a homemade Advent calendar, rather than a candy.
