Eight years ago, a disastrous Christmas Day culminated in a roast potato being hurled across the kitchen and a mother brandishing a carving knife at her daughter. This was the breaking point that led one London family to seek professional help, beginning an unlikely and enduring festive ritual: annual pre-Christmas family therapy.
The Fight That Started It All
The precise details of that fateful holiday are now somewhat hazy, but the core memory remains vivid. A struggle over a dish of roast potatoes escalated rapidly. Kitty Drake, then in her twenties, recalls throwing a potato. Her mother's response was to pick up a carving knife and declare, "I would like to run you through with this knife." The Christmas dinner was abandoned entirely. While Kitty's mother walked the streets alone smoking cigarettes, the rest of the family sat in silence on the sofa watching the film Elf.
In the bleak aftermath, Kitty's mother made a decisive call. The family dynamic was clearly not Christmas-proof, and she believed the solution was to enlist an expert. Thus, a new tradition was born. Each December, the family now gathers for a sixty-minute session in a psychoanalyst's office in central London. The setting is far from festive; the room is eerily quiet, with family members eyeing each other warily like competitors before a match. In recent years, their father has attended via Zoom, his face flickering on an iPhone propped on a cushion, frequently sliding out of view.
The Annual Ritual of Assigning Roles and Airings Grievances
The therapy sessions are designed to pre-empt festive conflict by airing grievances in a controlled environment. In practice, this involves the stark assignment of "Christmas roles" alongside blunt home truths. "You do the turkey, Kitty, because you want to control everything," her mother might say. Kitty might retort that her mother should not be tasked with anything because she "can't cope." The initial desire to appear the sanest in the room has, over eight years, evolved into a tendency to highlight personal struggles for the therapist's sympathy, discussing antidepressants, anxiety, and rage.
The irony, as Kitty notes, is that for eleven months of the year, they generally get along well. She lived with her parents until age 29 out of choice, not just necessity. They communicate frequently and share jokes on a family WhatsApp group. The pressure to create a perfect, seamless family portrait seems to descend only with the advent of December, triggering old patterns of conflict and control.
A Shifting Dynamic as Parents Let Go
Recently, a significant shift has occurred. The parents, once the anxious organisers, have begun to disengage. Having discovered Instagram, they now often prefer playing on their phones to engaging in fraught festive preparations. Last Christmas, Kitty's mother spent more time napping than wrapping presents and seemed unbothered by arguments, refusing to shout back.
This new detachment was addressed in their most recent session. The therapist suggested rules like placing all phones in a kitchen bowl and counting to ten before shouting. However, Kitty sensed her mother's heart was no longer in the struggle; she had tasted the freedom of lower expectations. Her mother has even suggested that next year, Kitty and her sister might attend therapy on their own.
For Kitty, Christmas remains a potent litmus test for her overall happiness, a self-fulfilling prophecy of disappointment. Yet her parents appear to have broken the cycle. After eight years of structured festive conflict resolution, they have simply let go, leaving their adult children to wrestle with the perfect Christmas ideal, while they retreat to their phones and their naps, perhaps finding their own version of peace on earth.
