Family at Christmas and other compulsory gatherings

The points below about difficult family gatherings are ordered by how much difference they make, not by how often they get repeated.

It is predictable, which helps

The same subjects, the same people and the same dynamics recur, which means they can be prepared for. Writing down beforehand which two or three things are likely to happen removes most of the surprise. Surprise is what produces the reactions people regret.

Saying the prepared sentence out loud once beforehand is what makes it available at the table, because a rehearsed line arrives faster than one you have only thought about.

Decide the no-go list

Choosing in advance which subjects you will not be drawn into, and having one sentence ready for each, is the single most useful preparation. A short, warm redirection works better than a refusal to engage.

The useful part is this: repeating the same sentence rather than escalating is what ends a line of questioning. Agreeing the list in advance with whoever you arrive with matters as much, since being contradicted by your own partner in front of everybody undoes the whole arrangement.

Control the duration

Arriving later or leaving earlier is usually available and is rarely as objectionable as people fear. Having a stated departure time from the outset removes the negotiation at the end. Staying elsewhere rather than in the house transforms multi-day visits for many people.

On an ordinary week, having your own transport, or a return already booked, is what makes a stated departure time real rather than a preference somebody else can talk you out of.

Have an exit within the event

A walk, a shop run, washing up or a task in another room are all legitimate ways to leave a room for ten minutes. Planning them in advance means using them without it looking like a retreat. Taking one before you need it is more effective than after.

Bringing a task that genuinely needs doing — a dish to finish, a child to take out, a dog to walk — supplies a reason to leave the room that nobody reads as anything at all.

Some relationships do not improve

Where a relationship involves contempt, cruelty or a refusal to respect basic limits, reducing or ending contact is a legitimate choice. That decision is frequently harder socially than personally, because others will have opinions.

Put simply, where abuse is involved, specialist support exists and is worth using rather than managing alone. Reduced contact is a setting rather than a switch, and seeing someone twice a year somewhere public is a legitimate position between full attendance and cutting off entirely.

Adjust the size of it until it is something you would actually do tired.

The role you get cast in

Families assign roles early and go on using them, so a competent adult can find themselves treated as the disorganised seventeen-year-old they once were within an hour of walking through the door. The instinct is to argue against the role, which requires performing its opposite and confirms that the label was worth reacting to. Declining to take the part — answering the content of a remark and ignoring the framing around it — is duller and works considerably better than correcting the record.

Where it helps most, alcohol accelerates all of this in both directions, and choosing your own limit before you arrive is far easier than choosing it at the table.

Everything above, in order of what to do first

1. It is predictable, which helps. The same subjects, the same people and the same dynamics recur, which means they can be prepared for.
2. Decide the no-go list. Choosing in advance which subjects you will not be drawn into, and having one sentence ready for each, is the single most useful preparation.
3. Control the duration. Arriving later or leaving earlier is usually available and is rarely as objectionable as people fear.
4. Have an exit within the event. A walk, a shop run, washing up or a task in another room are all legitimate ways to leave a room for ten minutes.
5. Some relationships do not improve. Where a relationship involves contempt, cruelty or a refusal to respect basic limits, reducing or ending contact is a legitimate choice.
6. The role you get cast in. Families assign roles early and go on using them, so a competent adult can find themselves treated as the disorganised seventeen-year-old they once were within an hour of walking through the door.

The takeaway

Decide your two sentences and your leaving time before you arrive.

Pick the one that costs you least, and let the rest wait.