Genuine question: Has it ever been harder to stop yourself from running, screaming, from dinner with your extended family? To resist grabbing your aunt by the shoulders and growling obscenities at her? To fight the impulse to simply lay your head down upon the table and bang it, hard, in a grim staccato rhythm, to rid yourself of the noise of other people’s terrible opinions?
I think not. I think we are living through a time of such anxiety, such political division—each generation being fed its own form of disinformation on this smoldering planet—that the prospect of 48 hours in the company of one’s extended family can cause such intense tooth-grinding that, before Christmas is even over, your jaw falls clean off. How to survive? How to say goodbye without blood on your hands? How to… enjoy yourself?
One way to keep a modicum of control is to host the festivities yourself. If the overheated kitchen in your parents’ house is the scene of so many past crimes, consider inviting the family to your place, even if it is last-minute. Sure, everyone might have to bring their own chair, and your dad will have to smoke out of the window, but maybe these are compromises everyone is willing to make if it means you and your siblings won’t regress into adolescence or your mother won’t cry about gravy/death. Alternatively, avoid memories of fights gone by by meeting somewhere neutral—upstairs at a bar, or downstairs at a restaurant. It’s harder to have a screaming fight about war when a waiter is hovering by your shoulder with the specials. Trust me.
Are you dreading the questions? Have you got a mother who pecks at you for a grandchild, or an uncle who is obsessed with your employment status, or an aunt who can’t believe you’re still single, or a grandmother who can’t help but comment on the size of your rear? The trick is to have some responses ready. Workshop the things you really want to say, with all the bile, history, and radical honesty you can muster, then take a deep breath and chuck it all in the fire. Instead, find polite ways to shut down the conversation. Cheerful dismissals. When are you having kids? “That’s a great question! I wish I knew the answer,” followed by a long trip to the bathroom. Or, when someone mentions your weight, I like the responses suggested by Kami Orange, a TikTok creator whose “boundary phrases” have gone viral. Try, perhaps, “I’m not taking feedback about my body at this time.”
If you don’t trust yourself to summon the courage when the questions come, ask your mother or another sensitive intermediary to prep repeat offenders ahead of time. For instance, during a phone conversation about who’s bringing the cranberry sauce, she could drop in the fact that you’d rather not discuss your recent redundancy, or your wobbly fertility, or that you were dumped by the love of your life the night before a big birthday. And if she knows you’re fretting about the prospect of seeing, say, Uncle Basil, give her permission to step in and change the subject if she hears him homing in on your greatest insecurity like a torpedo. Let her sing, from across the table, “What did you think of Saltburn?”