What is the importance of Christmas in the collection, This Year It Will Be Different: And Other Stories?

The author uses Christmas to examine the effect of holiday stress in a variety of contemporary social arrangements. Four of the stories deal with traditional family structures and depict familiar holiday situations. In "A Hundred Milligrams," a couple spends Christmas with a mother who is critical of their lifestyle and the lack of a traditional code in their relationship. Beneath the lens of her microscope, they develop their own code. In "The Best Inn in Town," two grandmothers who despise each other make a ritual holiday visit to their progeny. While the son and daughter squirm, the grandchildren adapt disequilibrium into their notion of what constitutes a Christmas tradition. Ethel, the main character in "This Year It Will Be Different," rebels against all the years she has prepared for Christmas without any family help. The difference this year, she decides, is that she will do nothing to make Christmas happen and instead spend her time watching television. Her decision does light a fire under her family, but Binchy's ironic plot twist leaves Ethel with a different sort of assistance than she had hoped for. "The Ten Snaps of Christmas" deals with the anxiety surrounding choosing the right gift for a sulking teenager who is never content with any parental decision. Ironically, the teenager turns the unwanted gift into a lever for increasing her political power within the family structure.