According to this article, the idea that Thanksgiving gatherings in the U.S. frequently disintegrate into political uproar is a myth.
Our neighbors to the north apparently haven’t been able to avoid political polarization during their version of the event. Shocking.
Thanksgiving is always with Mrs. Homie’s side of the family. Always. For reasons that I’ll explain at the end of the thread for anyone who is interested.
It’s not acrimonious. It’s boring. I don’t go there craving conflict. I go there craving … anything, really, besides sitting around for hours afterward and fucking gossipping. They’ll gossip about the preacher’s daughter at First Methodist of Hooten Holler being knocked up by a (gasp) Black guy. They’ll gossip about the pilot light going out in the furnace at the feed store. They don’t play board games. They don’t watch movies. They don’t do anything but fucking talk.
In case anyone was wondering, we don’t do Thanksgiving on my side of the family because there basically isn’t one. My mother hates having a bunch of people at her house and finds a nice brunch in town that day. My siblings and their families all celebrate at their own homes or with their own in-laws.
The idea a sizeable percentage of people dislike holiday gatherings is borne out from talking to many people. As you suggest, this probably has many causes but differences of political opinion could conceivably account for some of this. Other polls have asked if you could be friends, have a relationship, etc. with people opposite your views, and suggest many would find this difficult.
I find this all a bit silly, as long as the views can be reasonably justified. Canadians are certainly not above this nonsense. But I know few who avoid all holiday gatherings. My views differ from those of several family members but we just agree to disagree and move forward.
I think the results of any poll or article would depend on who you asked.
I can’t vouch for these Canadian poll results either….
I think it probably depends on definitions- what does “dislike” mean? Does it mean there are other ways I would prefer to spend my day, or does it mean I dread the get-together or does it mean there are aspects I don’t like, but the aspects I do like outweigh them or is it that I’d rather go to a restaurant than hear my sister complain about how much work it was to cook or …? Because if 60 % of adults either dread them or don’t like them , then you would think that fewer than 50% of adults would attend a family gathering* but the estimates I’ve seen always say that 90+ percent of American families have a Thanksgiving get-together
* Some people who dislike the get-together will end up going anyway because others in the household enjoy it.
I note something of an unacknowledged straw man in the discussion. When I am required to attend a large family get-together with people I regard as distasteful, it does not invariably descend into acrimonious squabbling. Rather, in most cases, everyone makes a deliberate effort to avoid the divisive topics and keep things cordial.
But that is still not pleasant. That level of socially-conscious conflict evasion is exhausting. Everyone is constantly on eggshells, policing both themselves and one another.
Even if we never actually collapse into argument, I would still rather not be a part of that kind of scene.
I seem to recall the Thanksgiving gatherings of my youth featured “arguments” that mostly centered around sports teams, augmented with the uncles having a few beers and exchanging “Can you top this” types of stories.
In later years, as my sibs and I have moved into the ranks of the elders, it still seems that sports and TV/movies seem to dominate, but then we’ve never been a politically-inclined family, tho most of us do vote. We just don’t talk about it. For myself, I mostly dislike these get-togethers because of the amount of alcohol ingested. I’m not anti-booze, but I don’t like being around people getting drunk.
I’m pretty sure this year, Thanksgiving will be a fairly small family meal at our house - our daughter and her tribe, plus my husband’s parents and brother. Christmas will likely be the usual gathering at my brother’s place, but that’s mostly about eating and, this year, watching the grands/great-grands discover presents. And sans politics, but there will definitely be sports talk/team-trashing. That will be the extent of acrimony.
We rotate through Mom and Dad’s for the holidays. We’ve discovered that everyone likes that best once we started doing it that way some years ago when my brother and I were…not getting along.
We’ve since patched things up, but the rotating through just seems so much easier that we still do it that way.
Well said. My strategy for the day is to hang-out in the kitchen to help my wife with any chore she needs. Literally, I just wait by the sink for any pot, pan, or knife to need cleaning, then wash, dry and put away. This accomplishes two things: 1) there will not be a huge pile to clean-up after we eat, and 2) keeps me from having to interact very much with our guests.
Fortunately my family has dwindled down to my sister, brother in law, their grown kids which live out of state, and me. This year Thanksgiving will be at my sister’s with her grown son, his wife, and daughter. We laugh and have a good time. We know that I’m a Dem and they are not but we don’t discuss it. Before my mom and brothers died, she guilted us into pretending we were a happy family. Quite a few holidays ended up with my brother raving drunk, screaming “fuck you Peedin” before storming out.
I don’t care if I spend any holiday alone. It’s just another day to me.
I used to love getting together with my family. Now? Well, they are Trump supporters, which is a lot different than being conservative. It’s a massive elephant in the room.
I’m really uncomfortable at family gatherings now.
Our get togethers rarely have any political discussions. We are all pretty much in the middle, some leaning right and some leaning left. We catch up, watch a movie, or play games. I enjoy being with my family.
We are all brainwashed by jolly warm commercials and tv shows and so on, all the loving family gathered 'round the groaning board, big plump golden brown turkey and all the fixings. … Bullshit, I came from a dysfunctional cold family where we just went thru the motions. We always HAD to go to my parents house, and would sit there, ignored, offered to help and were turned down (because my mother was swigging from a bottle of booze in the kitchen flinging pots and pans around) and my father sitting slack-jawed in front of the sportsball on tv (blasting as he was half deaf). Husband just brought a book since no one was talking to us. All that travel, and the washing up, and the endless endless day…later, my mother began to get dementia, and I would have to shop, prep, cook, serve, and clean up for her and my brother. Then do the same for my OWN little family the next day!..it got to be too much. (and the thing is, Thanksgiving used to be wonderful. We used to visit relatives in NYC in the past, who not only hosted us, but took us into the city for sightseeing and a show the next day. THAT was magical. Not what it devolved into years later.)… Now, I’m just about alone in the world and glad to be done with it. I tell my daughter if she gets a better offer for Thanksgiving, she should take it. Friendsgiving, or dinner with her boyfriend’s nice family. I am done with it. I am laying in a supply of Thai or Chinese food and anyone, any friend or relative who is free, who wants to come over, is welcome, but there will be no turkey!
I did some searching and couldn’t find anything that fit your statistic of 60% disliking getting together at Thanksgiving with their family because of political arguments. I wonder if someone asked a bunch of people whether they got together at Thanksgiving with their families. 60% said that they didn’t, but it had nothing to do with political arguments. It was because they lived too far from their family to travel just for a dinner or because the rest of the members of their families were dead or because they had no family really or because they disliked someone in the family for some non-political reason or because they visited their family for Christmas and two get-togethers only a month apart seemed unnecessary. If this poll was taken recently, maybe it was because a lot of people still won’t get together because they fear anyone they don’t interact with on a day to day basis might have covid-19.
For the past few years I have been having Thanksgiving with some nonrelated people, some of whom are also SDMB members. I travel to see my family at Christmas, but that is an eight-hour drive. Has anyone found any reliable statistic indicating that 60% of people get into political arguments with their relatives whenever they get together with them?
There is a cite above. Is it reliable? I doubt it.
I think that it’s easy to hit 60% depending on how you phrase it. From the first reply, on down the line, to @Cervaise’s really well written analysis, it comes down to a definition of “dislike”.
As I said in previous posts, I absolutely dislike it - but not so much that it isn’t a worthwhile experience. But I dislike going to Costco even if I do bi-weekly. It’s a chore, rather than a fun event, but it’s more than worth it in terms of keeping the extended family happy.
So, if I was writing a poll, and used words like “stressful” which is at least slightly less loaded than dislike, we’d probably have higher numbers, while if we used “dread” we’d probably get lower numbers. Because even in this thread, with a very small cross section of the population, we’ve gotten very different experiences.
A more interesting poll would probably be about which holiday you look forward to the MOST. In my case, it’s New Year’s Eve / Day, which my wife and I reserve to spend with friends, where we make too much food (or buy), too much eggnog (all homemade), and drink, watch MST3K, and personal traditions that make no sense (House, and ST:TOS Operation – Annihilate!)
60-odd years ago, there was a comedian on BBC radio whose shtick was monologues as a gossipy, henpecking wife, featuring the regular line “I’m saying nothing - there was enough said at our Edie’s wedding”. It’s just human nature - expected jollity at family occasions can so easily build up old tensions and resentments - youcan choose your friends, but your family you’re stuck with.
How to make a poll showing the desired result:
Do you absolutely refuse to attend any holiday gatherings with your family, due to extended arguments?
(Almost all would say no.)
At holiday get togethers, do any members of your extended family occasionally make insensitive or unwelcome comments, or discuss politics that might make you feel slightly uncomfortable or uncomfortable?
(Almost all would say yes.)
If they asked a neutral question to people with large families with urban and rural members, in evenly divided states, I could guess numbers above 40%. Sixty still seems high?
I have very fond memories of Thanksgiving as a kid / young adult. We almost always had a big get together at my parents’ house, and maybe went out to my Aunt/Uncle’s after our dinner to hang out there. When my siblings started their own families, it was a mass of BIL/SILs, little kids and old people, just a ton of crazy family stuff, topped off with poker, football games, and really no arguments or bullshit to navigate. I could have simply been oblivious to the negatives, but I genuinely miss those times.
It’s a bit harder now, everybody’s older, and I have a disabled nephew who is difficult to include in the festivities, his affliction leaves him very disruptive to those around him, physically and vocally. That has changed the holiday dynamic to a substantial degree.