Proud to be British. Read more from journalists who champion our culture, history and values. | | Christmas arguments, says relationship psychologist Susan Quilliam, are exacerbated by stress and alcohol |  | Miranda Levy | Susan Quilliam, a relationship psychologist, says it’s no surprise that Christmas can turn volatile, because we all revert to our “Christmas selves”. Old family roles reappear the moment we’re under one roof – the bossy eldest, the peacemaker, the sibling who retreats to their room – while stress, alcohol and claustrophobia amplify every minor irritation. “Even rats in a cage,” she notes, “start eating each other after a while.”
The flashpoints recur with wearying predictability. Political rows erupt across generational lines, with “woke” and “bigoted” hurled down the table until someone flees to do the washing-up. Braggarts hold court with tales of holidays in the Maldives or million-dollar business deals until someone finally cuts across them.
Guests trail mud and wrapping paper through the house. One side of the family splurges on lavish presents, while the other winces at the disparity. Then the in-laws arrive and conversation runs dry; the over-helpful visitor commandeers the kitchen and leaves you feeling redundant in your own home. Even the closest families can find themselves drifting from minor gripes to something verging on a feud.  | | Too many cooks? Sometimes it’s easier just to give in | Ms Quilliam’s advice is disarmingly straightforward – spot trouble early and try to lighten the mood before it flares. A gentle “next!” can defuse political skirmishes, while a tactful interruption might rein in the table’s resident show-off.
Spending limits agreed in advance take the sting out of gift-giving disparities, and when an over-eager helper seizes control of the kitchen, sometimes the most diplomatic response is simply to pour yourself a drink and let them get on with it.
Continue reading ➤ | | Prof Tim Spector shares his tips on improving your gut health naturally | “People often ask me how they can tell whether they have good gut health,” reveals gut health expert Prof Tim Spector. “They want to know if there are simple ways to monitor it.”
He says you don’t always need a medical examination to understand the condition of your gut.
According to Prof Spector, your body will naturally send you signals that your microbiome is imbalanced. Heartburn, for example, can be a sign of poor gut health, particularly if it strikes at bedtime.
Eating a variety of colours (think orange carrots, purple sprouting broccoli and red berries), adding some fermented foods and cutting back on high-risk processed foods can all make a meaningful difference.
Research shows that, within two weeks of diversifying your diet, your mood and energy can start to lift.
Here, Prof Spector reveals all the symptoms to watch for, and effective ways to fix them.
Continue reading ➤ | | Daniel Hannan Shackling ourselves to the declining European Union would be insanity The Lib Dems and many Labour MPs want us to enter a customs union with Brussels. That offers the worst of all worlds Continue reading ➤ Janet Daley Donald Trump has just proved that he is un-American Continue reading ➤ Kemi Badenoch The next Conservative government will ditch the ban on petrol cars Continue reading ➤ | Join the debate. Share your thoughts with our journalists and your fellow readers. | | Donald Trump’s description of Europe, offered in an interview last week, was characteristically blunt: “What they’re doing with immigration is a disaster”. Unless this changes, he said, some nations “will not be viable countries any longer”. The comments came hot on the heels of the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy, which claimed that the continent would be “unrecognisable in 20 years” and risked “civilisational erasure”. Sam Ashworth-Hayes looks at the numbers and asks whether the US president is right to say that Europe is being transformed. Continue reading ➤ | |  | | You don’t often find a Hollywood actor who is keen to expound on the issue of professional jealousy, writes Guy Kelly, Features Writer. Fortunately for me, Paul Bettany’s latest role, playing Antonio Salieri, Mozart’s envious rival, in Sky’s Amadeus, meant we talked about little else. The star of A Beautiful Mind, Master and Commander and WandaVision has never been an industry “apex predator”, and, he told me, “having seen it, I can say with hand on heart I don’t want that”. I found him impressively honest and nicely grumpy – I could just about believe him, too. Continue reading ➤ | | | Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, has declared war on “woke” Calibri, preferring the supposedly more dignified Times New Roman. However, behind this typographic tantrum lies a deeper truth – our fonts betray more than we intend. A behavioural psychologist reveals what your chosen typeface really says about you. Continue reading ➤ | | | Stacey Peat has tried to keep her career from stalling Credit: Tony Buckingham | | “You shouldn’t feel like you’ve lost that career just because you’re a parent,” says mother-of-two Stacey Peat. Despite an impressive CV and 15 years of HR experience, she has been forced to accept a £23,000 pay cut after making 200 job applications following a six-month break from work. Continue reading ➤ | | | Simon Dickson’s return to Rusty Oak, his childhood home in rural Perthshire, required drastic measures. The farmhouse was running on a “completely bananas” mix of four energy sources, and lacked flow. To fix it, the architect removed 70cm thick stone walls and repurposed corrugated Corten steel from an old barn. The result is a seamless blend of heritage and modern design, all achieved for less than £500,000. Continue reading ➤ | | | Loyal readers of my column will know that companies have been behaving as badly as ever, so I’m delighted to have won back £2.6m for Telegraph readers this year, writes Katie Morley, our Consumer Champion. It brings my total since 2019 to more than £13m. This year, I solved some of my toughest cases yet, many involving huge amounts of money. Here’s my round-up of the most shocking – and a glimpse of what will be filling my time next year. Continue reading ➤ | | Everyone is wrong about: Christmas songs Every week, one of our writers takes an unfashionable position, either defending a subject that’s been unfairly maligned or criticising something that most people love.  | Camilla Tominey Associate Editor | If I never heard a Christmas song again, I’d die happy. I don’t have a favourite: I hate them all.
I don’t want to drive home for Christmas with Chris Rea any more than I want to rock around the Christmas tree with Brenda Lee. I just want them to stop singing. All of them. For good.
Mariah Carey, I don’t want a lot for Christmas but there is just one thing I need: for you to shut your warbling gob and never open it again in the season of goodwill to all men (and royalty-grabbing women).
People say, ‘‘Come on, as a child of the 1980s, you must love Do They Know It’s Christmas?’’, to which I reply – ‘‘Yes: I enjoyed it the first time I heard it, but half a million times later, it’s beginning to grate a little.’’ The best fairytale New York could ever produce would be to allow Shane MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl to rest in peace, God bless their festive souls.
I feel equally inclined to throw myself headlong into a bough of holly even when I hear more classical numbers like Little Drummer Boy or Walking In The Air, which makes me wish the Snowman had dropped Aled from a great height, somewhere over Croydon.
Feliz Navidad? How about, Feliz Neveragain? Let me make myself as clear as Bing bloody Crosby belting out White Christmas: What I’m dreaming of right now is a gift-wrapped Black and Decker to drill out my own ears. Santa Baby, hurry down the chimney tonight, why don’t you?
It’s not the most wonderful time of the year. It’s a nauseatingly repetitive assault on my tympanic membrane. Let this Christmas be Wham’s last; make all future Christmas nights be silent. In the shell of a chestnut roasting on an open fire: Let it Stop! Let it Stop! Let it Stop!
If you disagree – or agree but want to see where your least favourite festive tunes rank – here are Telegraph Culture’s top 100 Christmas songs of all time ➤ | | To buy or not to buy? It’s the difficult question faced by motorists considering switching to an electric vehicle. There’s the initial cost of the car itself, charging and changing taxes to factor in. We’ve asked the experts for their tips to keep costs down, and reveal the cheapest models. Continue reading ➤ Below are two more articles that I hope will improve your weekend: |  | During his five-decade fight to save his beloved elephants, Iain Douglas-Hamilton was squashed by a rhino, shot at by poachers and charged by irate elephants, as well as surviving several plane crashes, writes Chris Maume, our Deputy Obituaries Editor. Douglas-Hamilton, who has died aged 83, persevered through severe droughts – and, in 2010, a flood that washed away years of research.
He went to Tanzania in 1963 as a postgraduate student and paved the way for many of today’s elephant conservation practices. The information he gathered initially was alarming, and in the 1970s, as he put it, he “switched careers from somebody who was studying elephant lives to someone who was studying their deaths”.
Fuelled by a demand for ivory, poaching exploded, leading to what Douglas-Hamilton called the “elephant holocaust” of the 1980s, when the African elephant population more than halved, from 1.3 million to 600,000. In Uganda, where elephants were on the verge of extinction, he flew between the national parks wearing a flak jacket and sitting on armour plating, establishing successful air and ground patrols against poachers. Gradually, elephant numbers began to recover.
His lobbying led to the 1989 ban on the ivory trade, but in 2002 and 2008, “one-off” sales of seized ivory were allowed, kick-starting the return of poaching. He responded by winning hearts and minds in China, the centre of the trade, and in 2015 Barack Obama and Xi Jinping agreed to bring it to an end.
Read the full obituary here ➤ | | Find as many words as you can in today’s Panagram, including the nine-letter solution. Visit Telegraph Puzzles to play a range of head-scratching games, including PlusWord, Sorted, and Quick, Mini or Cryptic Crosswords.
Yesterday’s Panagram was ZIRCONIUM. Come back tomorrow for the solution to today’s puzzle. | | Thank you for reading. Allister Heath, Sunday Telegraph Editor
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