To be fuming that DH has spent the whole day on his laptop?

Is he usually this emotionally unavailable and avoidant and hell bent on ruining special days op?

once he’s asleep I’d be straight in that office checking his browsing history to see what he’s been up to because I’m pretty sure it’s not work! There’s something he’s doing on that laptop that he doesn’t want you to know about hence why he’s rushing you out of the room and telling you not to disturb him.

As pp suggested it could be an affair or some sort of addiction but no employer is going to expect him to work all day from 5am on Christmas Day. He doesn’t sound extremely avoidant to me, like he’s avoiding spending family time with you. Even if it’s an affair like some people are saying, you’d still expect him to be at least sat at the table for Xmas dinner. What a selfish, self centred little prick! Id be making sure he got the same treatment on his birthday!

He is having an affair

Why is everyone assuming he is not working? I worked at least in 2 jobs which required me to work on Christmas Day - both senior office based jobs. If he is closing deal in country which doesn’t celebrate Christmas (and there are plenty of them - not only Middle East), oversees any such countries or if he heads up operations, nothing stops at Christmas. If he is senior he has to work, nobody checks on him but he has to handle it.
I love it how the whole mumsnet just assumed he is gambling, having affair or avoiding family without having any info about his job,
he should have communicated better and tried at least appear for part of Christmas dinner but have some mercy - he woke up at 5 am on Christmas Day to work, something must have happened.

because depending on the job / role even telling your partner is a risk, imagine a high alert mi5 mission and your partner then says x is happening in the field and mi5 is needed and all officers are operational active ready etc and then the wife or husband then lets slip to a friend they know about oh my other half was working on that etc and so on, the butterfly effect

security / espionage etc

This better not be a troll post...

My first thought was espionage, too - thinking of how in The Americans, Stan first figured out that Elizabeth and Philip were deep cover KGB agents because they claimed they had to go on a business trip on Thanksgiving Day, leaving their children behind.

Seriously, imagine that he somehow really DID, completely unexpectedly, have to work from 5AM to 9PM or later on Christmas Day. How could he NOT understand that his wife and young children would be disappointed by this? And how could he NOT find ten minutes to explain what he knows about the situation and let his wife, at least, get a better idea of what to expect so that she can regulate the situation a bit for this children? I call shenanigans.

I agree

This

Hea havibg an affair or gambling. Just say you dont believe him and leave him.

There is no job where it would be absolutely impossible to say "I've got to work today, there has been an incident, I'm so sorry but I don't know how long it will take to fix".

It's also highly unlikely that the person wouldn't be able to stop to eat at all between 5am and 8pm.

And the fact that this whole thing has come as such a shock to his wife would suggest he's not in the sort of job where urgent incidents could happen on Christmas day which require him to work.

I suspect he just wants to steer clear of you and the kids because he finds you all super irritating and he doesn’t want to end up arguing on Christmas Day so he’s avoiding you all

It’s not that we have no imagination but if this were the case why wouldn’t he have said - X is happening, I’m going to be needed to work, I’m so sorry, etc etc?

I agree that an online affair for all that time in one day also sounds implausible but so does obsessively working from 5am until 8pm.

What does he do as a job?
Really sorry op but this sounds like an affair/gambling or some other not work related problem to me.

I’m always amazed at how many Mumsnetters have absolutely zero notion of any jobs being different from those in their own narrow range of life experience.

All the people saying ‘Well unless he’s a police officer / surgeon there’s no way he’d have to work on Christmas Day’ and ‘Nobody with an office job would have to do this’ are really making me laugh. Loads of people have office jobs, at all levels, that might require them to do emergency work on Christmas Day. Do people not realise that if, eg, there’s a cyber attack on Christmas Day, it’s not only the IT people who would need to be working? In reality there would be a whole incident management team working. It could include press officers, comms officers, payroll, HR, facilities, customer service managers, logistics managers. I’ve worked in the comms team in the public sector and ended up working from around 6pm on Boxing Day throughout the entire night until around lunchtime the following day, and that was in connection with an incident that could just as easily have happened on Christmas Day.

The OP obviously won’t say what her husband does or where he works, so we don’t know. But it isn’t actually unfeasible at all that someone with an ordinary office job might have to work on Christmas Day due to an unforeseen incident.

Does he work in security? What job does he do?

I don't see how we can know whether it's unreasonable until we know the type of field. All those saying there is "no way" this type/timing/duration of emergency could happen have a rather limited sense of the types of jobs out there. Mine certainly could have this.

Whether your husband's can is the real question.

I don't see how 14 hours is an affair.

A financial problem maybe that he is desperately trying to solve before you catch him, maybe.

So many unanswered questions and scenarios here. I think we need the OP to give an update with some more context as we have gone down every possible route and explanation.
I think the only thing not mentioned is that he maybe works for Elon Musk and one of his Starlink Satellites has hit Santa's sleigh and wiped out Rudolph!

If he's so busy that he has to work all day on Christmas day when he's supposed to be on holiday then he's incompetent.

The Op needs to report her reply stating the children's ages, could be very outing to a social worker / teacher etc. Possibly even the birth parents assuming all the children are from one family.

Do you work in a similar role to your husband @MamaOnTheCoast? Is it a role where there are emergencies that can't wait because they will cost the organisation a substantial amount? Where I work we have urgent, unavoidable things at all hours / days. Christmas is not immune. Senior people can't just say not today. They have to work so that the lower down people can have the day off.

Without knowing what your husband does, it's impossible to say if he's been unreasonable and the work could wait.

I’d have tipped his Christmas dinner on his keyboard! Why on earth are you putting up with this?

You know he's not working, right?

He clearly doesn't want to be around children that are not his.
Awful behaviour.
How come you are fostering so many children if your husband has zero interest?
What a horrible message to send vulnerable children.