i just want to say that I agree with you, and it was an explanation I came up with for her behaviour, not an excuse. If it helps, my childhood was awful, and I never even had a Christmas tree. I know the feeling of yearning for family quite well.
And yes, she should learn to adapt. Families come in all shapes and sizes. There isn’t always a mum, a dad, a brother and a family dog. I was simply pointing out that she’s very cosy with Alfie’s family, and it’s my opinion that she has latched onto them because she feels “homeless”, and it’s a big reason why she doesn’t want to lose Alfie. Both for all the years she’s put it on the promise of a future family, and because she’s adopted his family as her own. It’s quite evident from her behaviour that she’s very nostalgic of her past and hasn’t properly got over her parent’s divorce, despite it happening later in her life, either in her late teens or early 20s(?). She probably never had much time as a single woman learning to navigate life and a newly-shaped family by herself. Now she’s 30 and losing Alfie might, through fault of her own, make her very lonely. I think just a few pages ago, a user pointed out that she entered into a relationship with Alfie just 3 months after her last mention of Wilf on Twitter.
I do want to apologise if I’ve offended anyone by saying Zoe might feel her family is too fragmented to feel Christmases are festive with them. This is a Zoe-specific bury-head-in-90s-hermit-hole explanation. Many people not so hung-up as Zoe have blended families and enjoy them immensely. Blended is the new normal, anyway.