The therapist's holiday breaks always resonate with meaning for the patient; none more so than Christmas. Using the meaning of the Christmas break, set in the context of redecorating work taking place in the department - with its inevitable disruptive consequences - I attempt to explore and understand the symbolic significance of such holidays to the patient. In particular, to look at the more primitive, infantile psychic mechanisms that are employed to defend against the pain of separation and the loss of the therapist as a maternal holding environment.