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It's early December, and I find myself seated in a therapist's consulting room in the heart of London, gearing up for an hour of holiday-season family counseling. Outside, the Christmas lights are twinkling. I can hear a joyfully shouting drunk person floats up from the street. Yet within the consulting room, an eerie silence hangs. My mother, my sister, and I perch in squishy armchairs, feigning interest in the art while actually eyeballing each other like boxers. My father is just a small, pixelated face on a smartphone, propped up on a cushion. He doesn't really believe in therapy but compromised by joining via video call. He keeps falling off his cushion.

“Should we start with gifts? Or the meal?”

Our therapist looks kindly at us through her glasses. She is in her 80s, she has a profoundly experienced demeanor—as if she has seen every form of dysfunction imaginable. She allows the quiet to linger before speaking.

Our family started "holiday counseling" eight years ago, following a celebration so disastrous my mother decided we needed professional help. The precise details are fuzzy, but I distinctly recall wrestling with my mother over a tray of roast potatoes. I also remember hurling a potato. In response, my mother waved a carving knife at me and said, “I would like to stab you with this knife.” We skipped Christmas dinner altogether. My mother walked the streets alone, smoking, while the rest of us sat on the sofa watching a Christmas movie.

The Dream of a Holiday-Resistant Family

When we started therapy, the aspiration was to inoculate our family dynamic. The idea was to air grievances in advance, with a mental health professional, to prevent future strife. But, in practice, it unfolds as an annual December hour where we dole out "holiday duties" while delivering painful truths about each other's characters. My mother will look at me and states, “You do the turkey, Kitty, because you need to manage everything.” I then reply, “I don’t think you should do anything this year, Mum, because you can’t cope.”

I think we all genuinely desire a happy Christmas, but we also seek victory at therapy—which means securing the tacit approval of our therapist. In the immediate aftermath the potato event, winning meant acting more rational than you were. In early sessions, we were subdued and made sensible suggestions about task lists. But lately, we've realized we can get more sympathy by hamming up our personal struggles. My sister discusses her anxiety; I delve into my rage. It feels quite exciting to discuss ourselves this way, as if we are really up against it. Sometimes we go too far, and our therapist cuts in: “Remember, it is your mother who is struggling.” My mother then smiles slyly. “Yes, I can’t cope because I’m unwell.”

Eleven Months of Easy Harmony

The curious thing is, when it's not Christmas, we have a nice time. I lived with my parents until I was 29, not just because I lacked the funds to leave. I enjoyed it. For eleven months of the year, we don’t point score. We speak on the phone frequently and share humorous things in a messaging group. I even value that we are sometimes irritable and melancholy together—it feels honest, with no pressure to put on an act. But then December rolls around, and we suddenly start attempting to smooth each other's hard edges all over again, trying to create an impossibly idealized family image.

A Shift in Dynamics

In the past few years, however, something has changed. My mother was once the one who organized our annual therapy session and panicked about possible conflict. Recently, she seems more detached. My sister and I, now in our early 30s and without children of our own, have become more managerial of the family we have, while our parents appear more and more laid-back. They both joined social media recently and last year spent long periods on their phones. They didn’t always come to the table when called. My mum retreated to her room often, not doing chores but napping. She didn’t even seem particularly upset by arguments. When I shouted, she didn't retaliate.

We addressed some of this in our recent session. A new rule will be implemented this Christmas: everyone must turn off their phone and place it in a bowl in the kitchen. Our therapist also recommended closing our eyes and counting to ten before shouting. But I could sense my mother’s enthusiasm was lacking. She had tasted freedom and now just wanted to nap and play on her phone.

The Litmus Test and Releasing Control

For me, Christmas remains like a litmus test for my entire existence. The degree of happiness and calm I feel on the day seems like an terrible premonition of the quantity I can expect in the future. The harder I try to make my family conform, the more let down I feel—and so the cycle continues. I find it hard to release control. But my parents have let go. My mother has suggested that next year, my sister and I go to therapy on our own.