These are the first holidays since dad brought his girlfriend home (he’s 47, she’s 24). My brother and I live with him. At this year’s Christmas meal besides the usual guests, mom and girlfriend’s parents were also present. Definitely an unusual situation but it was a nice event cause everybody was levelheaded.
We don’t do Christmas, but had friends over for solstice pizzas. My wife announced a ‘no politics’ rule at the outset - not because of likely arguments, but just because it can get very repetitive and depressing.
It was a cosy and enjoyable evening after that - as they usually are.
Back a long way when I was living with my family we didn’t talk about politics anyway: partly since it was widely understood that one didn’t, but mostly since none of them were consciously political anyway. Christmas meals were generally free of arguments in general. The only point of contention was the mysterious presents that appeared for the children that actually came from dad’s side of the family - with whom he had long-since fallen out and dropped all contact - and that consequently had to be disguised or kept under the radar one way or another. That didn’t always work.
I think we all should have a no politics rule… It’s just turning people against eachother, when we have much more incommon with eachother than the politicians.
Also it creates mind ghosts in dumb people. They go oh yeah, so you support genocide?" or" huh, you are a child molester right ".
You can’t argue with stupid people but you can choose to not argue at all. :)
I have a strangely opposite situation. Politics is one of the safer topics in my family, even though I am a lot further left than the rest of them.
If it’s movies, hobbies, travel, relationships, or anything else on the table, then I’m heavily outnumbered, and will inevitably be made to feel like shit about myself.
So, in my case, I have very little in common with them except for being on the left side of politics, and the areas that we disagree there feel much less personal than them judging all of my life choices.
It’s so strange that a lot of people have the need to push others down for what interests they are enjoying.
On the other hand, I’m looking at Lemmy and I’m seeing the exact same thing here - downvoting when you don’t agree instead of leaving it alone.
My family ranges between snobby bourgeoisie to lower level elites, and they act like they can’t comprehend anything that isn’t the squeaky clean version of the American Dream, seemingly to preserve their fragile illusion that they are better than anything less. Saying that they refuse to recognize their privilege would be the understatement of the year. I’ve heard members of millionaire families among them describe themselves as “middle class” because their friends are billionaires.
So, as you can imagine, it becomes difficult to know what to talk about when they think the movies I like are obscene, my problems at work are ungratefulness, my travels in Mexico are recklessness, my interest in technology is criminality, and the story of my life is a tragedy.
Hence, I tend to just get drunk and ask them questions to keep the focus off me, but I don’t always succeed.
Haha :) It’s all relative I guess. Billionaires are comparing themselves to other billionaries, not the guy down the street who sits in wallmart cash register all day.
I don’t like my family either. We don’t really choose what people become our parents… Or maybe we do, but it takes place outside this realm before we are born, if we do. I envy people who like their parents.