How to keep all your guests happy this Christmas

We all wish we had a perfect family — with no ‘issues’ or personality traits that drive us bonkers. But we all do, says Suzanne Harrington, who has compiled a guide on how to stop them ruining Christmas

As if it’s not bad enough having to spend all that time and effort acquiring ridiculous stuff like a tree and a turkey — neither of which, presumably, have ever expressed any desire to be chopped down or chopped up — you then have to pimp your house like Santa’s grotto, and bankrupt yourself on tinsel and fairylights and Quality Street. But the worst is yet to come. Yes, them. The guests.

Having your house full of people you manage to successfully avoid during the rest of the year can be a bewildering experience, provoking the kind of existential crisis no amount of sherry will blank out. It is imperative, therefore, to be prepared. For the worst.

The Vegan

Although inherently cranky, most vegans can be appeased with an offering of tofu or similar. However, do not antagonise a vegan by suggesting that, as it’s Christmas, why on earth can’t they have a plate of turkey like a normal person, or at least get stuck into the cheese board. They won’t. Neither can you present a vegan with Christmas dinner consisting of a few boiled Brussels sprouts with a side of cranberry sauce. Not without invoking their plant-based wrath.

How To Deal With: If you have to Wikipedia the word ‘vegan’, it might be safer to suggest they supply their own protein. They’d probably prefer that anyway, the seitan-worshipping control freaks. You can always provide festive roast potatoes, as long as they’re not dripping in goose fat. And no, mince pies aren’t vegan either. Seriously. It’s a minefield. Easier to just get them drunk as quickly as possible.

RELATED: 20 scrumptious recipes to help you cook up a three-course vegan feast for Christmas

The Alcoholic

Despite our remarkable cultural tolerance for this kind of thing, you still don’t want to be sitting next to a slurring drunk who is picking fights with the Christmas tree or collapsing in tears on the cat. Everyone gets a bit merry at Christmas, but there’s merry and there’s lairy. Plus with everyone packed into an overheated confined space, the opportunity for an actual brawl is at its annual peak.

How To Deal With: Seat the alcoholic next to the Ballygowan. Dilute their drinks by any means necessary, and stuff them with rich, heavy food (if it’s the vegan who is the alcoholic, you’re in trouble). Prewarn others so that there is a code red response in place should the alcoholic kick off or pass out; if there’s a recovering alcoholic in the house, appeal to their sense of raging moral superiority by asking them to drive the drunk home. Nobody else can. You’ve all been on the prosecco since 10am.

The Recovering Alcoholic

What the recovering alcoholic lacks in punch-up potential they will compensate with sanctimony. The hand hovering ostentatiously over the wine glass, the pitying looks as you finally let rip on the Baileys once the turkey and presents have been processed; perhaps even an audible murmuring of the Serenity Prayer as the inevitable screening of the Sound of Music turns into howlingly bad karaoke in the moshpit of your festive front room.

How To Deal With: Give them something — anything — to do. Keep them busy. Pretend the dish washer has broken down, or the drunks need driving home, or the wrapping paper needs folding. Keep them supplied with unlimited chocolate. On no account say, “But it’s Christmas — surely you can just have a small one?” They can’t — and don’t call them surely.

The Moody Teenager

Spends the entire day messaging distress signals to its peer group about the hell of being stuck with the fam, so that it cannot look up from its screen even long enough to pull a cracker. Emanates resentment and Lynx interspersed with lingering gazes at the door, all escape routes blocked by familial expectation. Attempts brief small talk with Granny and Auntie, but uses up all social skills within seconds. Glowers and huffs.

How To Deal With: Do not attempt to disengage it from its screen. Accept it is easier to manage if scowling in a corner on Snapchat, rather than forcibly engaged in social interaction with actual relatives. Ideally set up in another room with other creatures of its own kind. Moody cousins, that kind of thing.

The Dog Obsessive

Cannot come for Christmas unless the dog comes too. Lactose-intolerant, gluten-free and asthmatic. The dog, that is. Has never heard the word ‘no’ or ‘sit’, unless it’s on your furniture, unpleasantly licking itself. Wees on the curtains, sicks up on the rug, causes the owner panic attacks after it gobbles a Ferrero Rocher. Doesn’t everyone know that chocolate is poisonous for dogs? And can it not have any turkey unless it’s deboned? And organic? It’s on a homeopathic remedy for glitter-related anxiety disorder.

Cannot travel without its special cashmere blankie. Hates children.

How To Deal With: Develop a life-threatening allergy to dog hair. Failing that, erect a rabies quarantine zone around your house. Or get a cat.

The Free-Range Parent

Christmas is a time for children, and nobody has been told this more often than the sticky-fingered little hurricanes currently demolishing your home. Free-Range Mummy is too busy exhaustedly lactating to take much notice, and Free-Range Daddy thinks it’s glorious to see Milly, Billy, Tilly and Ptolemy trashing the place with their new Christmas paints and rollerblades. So creative, so expressive. So full of glorious energy! And how wonderful that every adult in the room wants nothing more than to give every second of their unwavering attention for the entire day and evening to the incessant demands of these dynamic little beings. Right?

How To Deal With: Place firmly in the garden. End of.

The Yulezilla

Loves Christmas. Wants every day to be Christmas Day. Starts planning during the January sales, and counting down from August. Loves that it starts earlier every year, and has been stocking up on mince pies and sherry since Halloween. Insists everyone wears the paper hat from the cracker, and screams ‘bah humbug’ if anyone hesitates to bellow carols or tries to remove the polyester reindeer jumpers they have gifted everyone. A bit terrifying.

How To Deal With: Allow them to come over before December 25 and get involved with the tinsel and baubles, the cake-baking and bird-stuffing, and perhaps even the worst bit of all — the Christmas shopping.

By harnessing their unhinged enthusiasm you could save yourself a lot of hard work. On no account sit them next to the Hater for Christmas dinner.

The Hater

Yulezilla’s natural enemy. Detests Christmas and everything about it. Loathes the schmaltzy bonhomie, the ersatz goodwill, the consumerism, the weight of expectation. Hates the industrialisation and exploitation of everything from the turkey to Santa’s elves.

Militantly opposed to buying preposterous landfill nonsense like hankies and bath salts, and bristles with every jangly festive advert instructing them to spend, spend, spend. Wishes they were far, far away in a place Santa has never heard of.

How To Deal With: Seat them with the vegan. They might just get along. Again, ply with strong drink.

The Anxious Perfectionist

Wants everything to be perfect. Has been up all night trying to concoct some nightmarish Heston Nigella hybrid confection. Failed.

Apologising on a loop for being early, being late, bringing too much, not enough, the wrong presents, forgetting the gift receipts. Usually found either hyperventilating in the kitchen, or crying in the downstairs loo. The festive period is the prime trigger for annual eczema outbreak. Keeps repeating ‘keep calm and carry on’, until you want to rabbit punch them in the kidneys.

How To Deal With: Seat with the alcoholic, who will be too sozzled to absorb the high-beam radioactive waves of anxiety. Alternatively, they could be encouraged to do crowd-control with the feral children. And again, large quantities of drink might help. For yourself, obviously.