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 entirely.
The average marriage that ends in divorce lasts just over 12 years, meaning many families carry memories of a different Christmas while trying to construct a workable new one.
This has quietly changed the emotional grammar of the season. The old script of one house, one meal and one set of traditions feels increasingly like an anachronism.
In its place has emerged the great festive skill of the 2020s: backing down. Saying yes. Yes, you can have the children this year. Yes, we’ll swap days. Yes, let’s not do the big lunch. These decisions are rarely celebrated, but they are what keep the peace.
And when compromise runs out, people vote with their passports. Christmas travel is no longer an eccentric indulgence but a mainstream solution. In recent years, around four million UK residents have travelled overseas during the Christmas and New Year period, according to aviation and tourism estimates, with Spain, France, the UAE, the Canary Islands and Egypt among the most popular destinations.
Airports now treat Christmas week less like a family reunion and more like a summer getaway with jumpers. For blended families, the appeal is obvious: distance dissolves obligation. You can’t argue about whose house you’re at if you’re all somewhere else.
There is something quietly radical in that. Going abroad at Christmas used to signal either luxury or estrangement. Now it often signals pragmatism. When family structures are complex, a hotel buffet can feel less emotionally charged than a dining table loaded with history. Travel becomes a pressure release valve, not an escape from family, but from the expectations that cling to it.
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What would the Ghost of Christmas Present make of this? He would not find Scrooge’s nephew Fred’s carefree dinner party replicated in every home, nor the Cratchits’ cheerful scarcity. Instead, he would see step-siblings meeting briefly, grandparents adjusting to new rhythms, parents trying to ensure that nobody feels short-changed. It is less picturesque, but perhaps more honest.
The modern Christmas spirit is not about insisting on tradition at all costs. It is about choosing which battles not to fight.
In 2025, the kindest thing many people ado is relinquish control over the day, the guest list and the narrative. Christmas now belongs to those who yield: who say yes, step back and recognise that peace is sometimes the greatest gift available. It may not look like Dickens, but it is no less human for that.
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