If Ebenezer Scrooge were to see Christmas in 2025, the Ghost of Christmas Present would show him a very different domestic landscape from the one Dickens imagined.

Instead of a single table groaning under the weight of roast goose and moral certainty, he would visit WhatsApp groups arguing about handovers, children dividing time between households, and adults quietly renegotiating expectations. Christmas has become less a ritual, more a choreography.

The greatest virtue is no longer generosity, but flexibility. Once, Christmas was about gathering everyone together. Now it is about deciding where everyone fits.

Polling consistently shows that while most people still spend Christmas Day with partners and children, the pattern splinters sharply among divorced and separated families. With around one third of marriages in England and Wales ending in divorce, The festival is no longer a single event but a sequence: Christmas Eve here, Christmas Day there, Boxing Day somewhere else........

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