How to Survive Holiday Dinners

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Special to United Methodist Insight | Nov. 13, 2024

When I have led workshops for preachers and public policy advocates about how to preach about divisive topics, many have said they planned to use the advice in an even more frightening occasion: Thanksgiving dinner with their brother-in-law.

I happen to like my in-laws but have found it hard to discuss politics with a few of them—or religion with a few others.  Unless your family has a strict rule barring these topics from the table, you may be dreading your family gatherings after a particularly ugly presidential election. Some of us want to gloat, some of us want to rant, and many of us want to hide. How can you make it through a holiday meal without saying something you regret?

Listen before speaking. Few of us will pay attention very long to anyone who wants our attention without giving it. The Rev. William Sloane Coffin Jr. often said at the Riverside Church in Manhattan, “You should try to listen to your opponents carefully enough that you can state their position to their satisfaction.”

Let others know you heard them. I am more likely to remain civil if somebody first tells me, “I hear what you are saying, but I see things differently,” or “I agree with you about thus and so, but I wonder if . . . ”

Confess your own mistakes, ambivalence, and confusion. Try to never condemn something without first locating it in your own life. Rather than tell others that you think they are wrong, tell them how you realized you were wrong. It is far better to admit you have struggled with bias yourself than to call an in-law a bigot. If you held your nose as you cast your ballot for a candidate, say so. In a previous election, I told my best friend how reluctantly I had voted and learned that rather than casting his ballot for someone I loathed, he went Libertarian that year.

Use humor, particularly if you are the brunt of the joke. In talking about immigration, I suggest that when my Puritan ancestors landed in Massachusetts the local residents probably said, “There goes the neighborhood!” Be careful, though, about tales that someone in your family may see as ridiculing your clan. Before joking about my mom’s dad, who slipped across the border from Canada, even though he didn’t need a visa in 1912, or my father-in-law, who was detained as an illegal enemy alien, I note that I loved them both.

Don’t demand that others to agree with you. Paul Johnson, a Unitarian Universalist pastor, says he has found that most people were far more willing to hear him out if he does not expect agreement — or suggest that something is wrong with them if they disagree.

Speak for yourself. It is far more effective — and far less offensive — to say, “My experience has been different,” rather than “You don’t know what you are talking about.” Even relatives who think you have lived a really strange life are less likely to become indignant.

 Last, but not least, remember that God loves those who are wrong, including that relative who drives you crazy. As Martin Luther said, “God can carve rotten wood and ride the lame horse.” 

God even loves the likes of you and me.

Thomas W. Goodhue is a United Methodist clergyman who has pastored churches in Hawaii and New York and led the Long Island Council of Churches for 17 years. He is the author, most recently, of Queen Ka‘ahumanu of Hawaii (McFarland Books). This article appeared in an earlier form in Newsday.