“Baby, please come home,” pleads Darlene Love in her Christmas classic. We can imagine Bing Crosby’s rejoinder: “I’ll be home for Christmas, you can count me.” Every year, millions of travellers brave sleet and snow, bustling airports and wintry roads to return home to celebrate the holidays. Hours of labour in the kitchen culminates in a feast in which we make merry and spread good cheer. This is the glowing scene proffered by our culture during the holidays. However, while there are families who enjoy such picturesque harmony, many other gatherings are fraught with stark ambivalence. The warm ideal of a happy family dinner throw into relief the reality of family dynamics, the complex histories and patterns that make the holiday gathering a dreadful ordeal.
We’ve all heard about, or have experienced firsthand, the challenges of surviving a family dinner. An uncle starts asking you about your salary, a cousin makes an underhanded comment about your weight (Wow. . . what happened?). Everyone wants to know why you are still single, or why you and your wife have not had kids yet. With an audience at hand, the snide remarks come out (Rome is great if you like sweaty tourists. I much prefer Copenhagen). There are humble brags (It’s hard to find clothes that fit me, since few stores stock size zero), and shameless brags (my daughter was admitted to Stanford; she’s the only one in her graduating class!). If overt and covert signals of status do not shrivel your appetite, someone disgorges a brazen opinion on matters social and political. “What the hell is going on with these gender-neutral washrooms?” or “It’s about time they built that damn pipeline!” The heat you feel is your blood starting to boil.
That the dinner table has become a ruthless gauntlet is a lamentable fact of modern life. Social and familial expectations pin us to our seats, where we confront opposing worldviews. Our ears must endure uninformed opinions and inflammatory diatribes. Add alcohol to the mix and the gathering quickly descends into disaster. Under the threat of this volatile occasion, we clench our teeth, curl into a ball and hope that the fray passes by without too much damage. What we hope for in a merry occasion is in fact a minefield that we must cross with dread and alarm.
Often, the best we can manage is a tenuous and fragile truce, a tacit agreement to put aside divisive issues for the sake of conviviality. We ask our uncle about his recent vacation to Hawaii when he begins to rile against vaccines; we compliment the splendid casserole that mom made just as she begins to rehash the villainy of the woke left. We steer away from controversy because even the thinnest civility is preferable to ruinous conflict. This diversion from confrontation can feel cowardly, a form of conflict-avoidance, a way of circumventing the difficult conversations that is the life of democracy. On the other hand, we avoid the conflict for good reason; we know the players too well and have learned through experience that they have limited capacity for productive conversation. To keep mum or to change the subject can seem like a form of self-repression, but it is also a matter of self-preservation. So, we bite our tongue, tolerate the intolerable.
However, I submit that keeping the peace – even a momentary diversion from conflict– holds more virtue than we suppose. The dinner table is a microcosm of the opposing tensions that inhere social life. We all have a stake in the task of living together, however annoying and difficult. The willingness to make nice, to maintain civility amidst irreconcilable differences, is vital to our polity. We need a forbearance that says: we are disagree, and yet we must co-exist, even if only for this next hour. The recognition of our stark differences and the commitment to preserving a semblance of courtesy, though flimsy and menial, affirms a togetherness larger than our parochial views, a bond that calls on generosity to supersede the impulse of opinion. This temporary civility actuates a basic form of friendliness, in which we live out the belief that our togetherness is more important than my being right. If this seems pedestrian, consider how society suffers if we moved in the other direction. An escalating argument says: We disagree, and only one of us is right. Take steps further in this direction and we degenerate into: We disagree, and there is only room for one of us. This obliterative impulse, fueled by animosity and fear, frays the fabric of our shared life.
On the other hand, it seems unfair that the onus of peacekeeping falls to those most sensitive to conflict. Others who appear unburdened by self-awareness and impervious to reflection rarely assume the task of steering conversations to calmer waters. Worse, “conflict-avoidance” seems to name a defect in character, as if skirting controversy is the mark of spinelessness. However, defusing conflict and preventing the erosion of discourse is not the domain of cowards; they require skillfulness, intelligence, diplomacy, and courage, and poise. Those who know what is appropriate to the occasion – both its limits and affordances – and adjusts the course of conversation accordingly, practice diplomacy in its highest form. They aim to respect individual voices while upholding familial harmony, though personalities and tempers conspire against their effort. This is an assignment for those who heed the better angels of their nature, who strive to tread on higher ground.
Surviving a family dinner, navigating a mix of volatile personalities, is a distinct form of emotional labour. I have sat with clients who dread the holidays and feel drained in its aftermath. The gatherings sap their spirit and deprive them of the joy that our culture promises. They are chafed and bruised by the people who are supposed to provide love and warmth. Something must be wrong, they say, with themselves, or their family, or the world at large, because the joyful occasion is never joyful. The contradiction tightens into a knot, burrows itself deeper into the psyche, only to rear itself again next year when the season recalls the same drama, same script. As the years pass, holiday gatherings can turn saccharine idealists into bitter cynics.
There are coping techniques to help us get through the cringy dinners. Tuning into the bodily sensations can prevent us from being involuntarily drawn into emotional triggers. Breathing exercises can help us pause and regulate our reactions before we speak. Visualization techniques and mantras can help us stay poised when conversations turn incendiary. We can tune into details about our immediate surroundings or turn to someone next to us and compliment what their wearing as a way to diffuse tension. All these methods are useful and necessary. They may provide just enough assistance to keep us from blowing a fuse.
Beyond the momentary coping mechanisms, however, we might shift our perspective and approach the gatherings with new eyes. The pangs of dinner table reveal something about ourselves. When someone pushes my buttons, they are doing me a favour: they are showing me where my buttons are. I can look at how I am activated and thereby take ownership of my triggers. In mastering my own trigger, I am less prone to external stressor that can otherwise set me off. Brusque comments and stinging opinions are portals to self-examination. In their sting, I can inquire into my reaction and probe what vulnerabilities they provoke. Do I harbour an ideological bias that blindly reacts to contrary opinions? Are there truths in their perspectives that I refuse to entertain? Are there insights from their stories that I cannot consider because doing so will require a revision to my worldview? Do I insist on dismissing others because doing so preserves the certainty of my position? These reflective questions help refine our self-understanding. Further, they transform our frustration against others into a constructive examination of ourselves.
The holiday dinner, fraught it may be, may be a time of levity or tribulation. We may only be concerned with survival. The health of democracy is the last thing on our minds. Getting through the next hour may be primary task. Whatever we may need make it through – a timeout for fresh air, a quick cuddle with the family dog – let’s give ourselves grace and permission to do what is needed. Alongside these coping techniques, we can also step back and experience the gauntlet with a different attitude. This is also a learning experience, a way that life reveals to us its complexity – bewildering, comedic, tragic, absurd, ironic, and human. If we are able to experience the fray anew, we may find ourselves leaving the table somewhat wiser, more understanding of our frailties and more compassionate toward our flaws.