The kith, kin and other unwanted guests you can’t avoid this Christmas.

Christmas. The most magical time of the year. A time of unity, family and guests who have outstayed their welcome. A time when stereotypes really come into their own, grabbing the day by its antlers or whatever you’ve got on the top of your tree, and bringing it crashing down into a twinkling heap of divorce memories, break-ups and chapped lips. A time of new partners, old partners, gender politics, tension and Instagram. Of good food and bad food and food as a distraction from inter-marital strife.

So, take all this in, put down your ninth sherry, turn the telly off, and look around at whom you’ve inexplicably invited into your precious home. And if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, you’ll be more than a man, my son. You’ll be a Christmas miracle. Here are the people you are likely to meet over the festive period.

Lying on the sofa, his three-week-old daughter propped up on his chest, the new dad knows there is no one in the world who is more important than him right now and that, because of this, he needs to be brought a beer and something to snack on right now. Life is a miracle and he has created it. Righteousness washes over him like a wave. The magic of Christmas is the magic of children and guess who has just made a child? That’s right, it is he, the new dad, the young father, the man who is, clearly, still fertile. His daughter snorts and gurgles on him. What things must she be seeing in her mind, the young father wonders, secretly believing that what she sees is an outline of the face of her creator, him, the new dad. He hands his progeny to his wife. It’s time to go down the pub. He is a new dad and he needs some time for himself, needs to tell the lads of his achievement.

They nearly didn’t make it home for Christmas this year. What with it being a naked celebration of modern capitalism, and the rail-replacement bus service between Grantham and Peterborough. But they made the effort, so now they’re making it work for themselves by documenting the whole thing on social media for the 18 bezzies they met three weeks ago at uni. They start by rearranging the fire on Christmas Eve. The caption reads: “Domesticated, much?” A chuckle, the fire goes out, and everyone leaves the room. Onto the carefully constructed mince pie tower, and up it goes on Stories, amid furious giggling. Having fingered all the pies, everyone refuses to eat them, so they go in the bin. Drunk uncle asleep in a chair? No one is above irony – click. Mum weeping over the stove? Perfect, Boomerang. The Queen on telly? Dog filter. Santa mask on the crying baby? What, she was awake anyway! Everyone screaming at them because they’ve ruined Christmas? Content gold.

Nick’s in the kitchen, peeling the potatoes. He’s already popped to the shops to get some last-minute supplies. He started out addressing his new girlfriend Nadine’s father as “Sir”. He dressed up as Rudolph to entertain her youngest sister, but ended up scaring her. He’s wearing a tie. The kid’s sweet enough, thinks Nadine’s father, but he’s never going to last. It’s understandable – her last boyfriend was a guitarist who couldn’t stop taking drugs and cheating on her. Nick’s the safe recovery zone, the inflatable mat you hit at the bottom of the slide. He’s cute, thinks Nadine, as Nick talks about the half-marathon he ran for a charity a few months ago before segueing into intently listening to her sister discuss the latest TV show she’s obsessed with. But thoughts of guitars and flashing lights and late nights keep cartwheeling through her mind. She feels sad. She doesn’t want her old life back, but if Nick doesn’t stop earnestly contemplating her father’s alternative 9/11 theories, she’s going to have to break a plate over his head.

“It’s just ridiculous,” Jolyon says, “Totally ludicrous, completely bonkers. Can’t you all see that we could get out of this at the stroke of a pen? Why won’t you understand that Brexit is absolutely the worst thing that has ever happened in the history of this country?” Everyone agrees that it’s bad. Privately, some of the family have noted that Jolyon didn’t take much of an interest in politics before the referendum. Now he’s always demanding that “my point be heard”, he uses the word “democracy” more than Aristotle. “No, but do you really understand how bad this is?” Jolyon says, the sherry splashing up and out of his glass as he talks at great length about the customs union, trade tariffs and the border at Dover. “Have you even thought about Dover?” he asks. Have you? Have you? For a moment it looks like he’s about to draw a picture of some white cliffs. The turkey is eaten, the pudding dispatched and just as it looks like the “whole, exhausting thing” has been put aside for a moment, out come the cheese and port. “France! Portugal!” Jolyon exclaims, before setting off again. “I mean this is exactly what Andrew Adonis was saying the other day...”

As he stands clutching Nigella Christmas over the Aga, hands and frankly all positive memories of 2018 burned, his mind journeys back to last Christmas when this all started. There he was in Debenhams on Christmas Eve, vouchers in hand, ready to nail the wife’s present and then – boom! – somehow, he came away instead carrying an apron with two giant breasts attached, the words “sex kitten” embroidered in Garamond and no change for the bus. Anyway, to make it up to her, he volunteered to do the dinner this year. How hard can it be? Turkey in at midday, chuck a few potatoes on, a parsnip a head and, as all connoisseurs know, leave the sprouts in the veg trolley, ha ha ha! By 2.00pm, he’s sweating because everything’s half cooked. As 3.00pm rolls round, everyone’s furious. By 4.00pm, it’s time to wrestle back dominion so he pops on Toy Story 2 and pours more drinks. By 5.00pm, he’s too drunk to cook. By 6.00pm, too drunk to care. By 7.00pm, too drunk to notice that he’s been asleep since 6.15pm and everyone’s already eaten his wife’s salvaged meal. No one tells him what happened, of course, and so he smiles, that headache settling in nicely as he silently commits Nigella’s 24-hour turkey recipe to memory for next year.

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