Today is a happy day here in America, because it’s Thanksgiving Day — a day to gather with our families to enjoy a meal and spend hours talking with our relatives.
Today is a stressful day here in America, because it’s Thanksgiving Day — a day to gather with our families to enjoy a meal and spend hours talking with our relatives.
For many of us, Thanksgiving involves a delicate dance around topics that might “set off” certain family members — the dittohead uncle, the aging parent suffering from Fox Geezer Syndrome, the antivaxxer cousin, the sibling eager for a chance to again explain who really shot Kennedy, the aunt who worries that your particular understanding of substitutionary atonement won’t earn you full credit when you’re quizzed on the subject in the afterlife.
At some point today, tip-toeing through this conversational minefield, you will be baited. Some relative will try to suck you in to yet another pointless argument about something political, religious, conspiratorial, or all of the above. They’ll say something so over-the-top that you’ll feel like you just have to respond.
Don’t take the bait. That’s just the holiday-dinner equivalent of trolling, so DNFTT.
Post here instead.
When that FGS parent or proselytizing aunt tries to bait you with some outrageous comment, just excuse yourself for a moment and make your way to a computer. Use this thread to vent, share, commiserate, laugh. That cutting response you’re tempted to give while passing the cranberry sauce — don’t say it at dinner, save it for here instead. There at the table, bite your lip, inhale deeply and change the subject.
And maybe by sharing our stories here, we can also help one another to find new ways to discuss all these things with our feisty relatives when we get a chance somewhere away from the tinderbox of the big holiday dinners. These are our families, after all, and the reason they can be so stress-inducing is that we love them.
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