“My worst Christmas was the one straight after my marriage ended”

My worst Christmas was the one straight after my marriage ended. In the initial rawness of separation, my ex and I agreed that our ten-year-old son would share his time between us over the holidays. I had him first. I took him to my mum’s house a few days before Christmas and he had a great time helping bake mince pies with Granny, hanging out with the rest of the family and waking up to a load of presents on Christmas Day. It was lovely—right up until after lunch when his dad turned up to take him to his family Christmas.

I’ll never forget our son’s miserable face staring out the back window of the car as they drove away. Why had I agreed to a situation in which he’d be torn away from the warmth and fun of my mum’s house to go to a separate Christmas that was already underway elsewhere? How come I hadn’t thought through just how hard leaving would be for him?

Of course, I knew that he would have a great time with his dad’s family once he got there, but I felt terrible that he had to split himself in two because his father and I hadn’t managed to work out a better solution.

I missed him too and I felt desperately guilty. I thought back to my own childhood. My parents divorced when I was about the same age as my son was and my dad wasn’t around much. I saw my dad for a few hours each month, but he was never part of our family Christmases.

I realised that in making sure my son was able to spend a part of Christmas Day with his dad, I’d inadvertently created a different problem and now he was being forced to jump between us in a way that felt like a horrible wrench.

I tried to make the best of things that day, well aware that plenty of people endure far worse. But I’d seen what future Christmases might be like, and I didn’t stop feeling terrible. So much so that, once the holidays had come to an end, I went to see my ex and suggested that maybe we could spend more of Christmas together in future, so that our son wasn’t forced to split his time between us.

We agreed to set aside our differences and spend the bulk of the day under one roof, either at my ex’s flat or at mine. Anyone from either of our families who wanted to join us was welcome. Of course, all this was made easier because we lived very near each other, our split was relatively amicable and neither of us had serious new partners with plans and hopes and families of their own.

Over the next few years, this worked well, but inevitably, our families and our Christmases grew and developed. I met a new partner, now my second husband, who had two children from his first marriage.

Blended families bring competing priorities and inevitably test relationships—even strong ones. I’ve been part of several stepfamilies through my parents’ later marriages, but I didn’t realise how much the challenge of establishing my own had seeped into my bones until I wrote my new psychological thriller, Anything for You. The narrative revolves around a murder, but it’s the tension between parents, stepparents and children that lies at the heart of the story.

As the relationship between me and my new partner became more serious, we decided early on to do two things that have made all the difference to making our blended family work. Firstly, we talk about all the issues that arise — and there have been plenty! Secondly, we never get in the way of the other person prioritising time with their children.

We’ve been lucky in lots of ways: our ex-spouses are reasonable and generous people, and the three children we have between us all get along. Even so, how were we going to navigate Christmas once we moved in together? We didn’t want anybody to have to choose between their parents or miss out on spending time with their kids, so for our first Christmas under one roof, we invited everyone to our new home for the day. I wasn’t sure if anyone would get on board with this and I could see jaws dropping whenever I explained our Christmas plans to outsiders. But it worked. They all came: both our exes, all three of our children, my partner’s brother and sister-in-law, my ex-husband’s sister and my mum.

It was a brilliant day. Everyone pitched in and brought a dish or two and made the effort to connect with the people they didn’t know. It would have been so easy for my new partner’s ex-wife to arrive with their children and focus her attention only on him and his relatives, but she immediately made a beeline for my family, making an effort to connect with them all. Of course, her children followed her lead. And soon we were crowded around the kitchen table, enjoying turkey, crackers and trifle and creating my best ever Christmas as one big, beautiful, blended family.

Sophie McKenzie is a journalist, author and tutor. Her latest book Anything for You is published by Canelo and will be available to buy January 23rd 2025. You can pre-order it now.