A negotiator, a psychologist, a wedding planner, a conflict mediator and a maitre d’ share their hard-earned techniques for keeping the peace at Christmas
Ah, Christmas – a time to come together with family, mark the year that’s been and, for many of us, devolve into explosive, regrettable arguments before dessert hits the table.
If your holiday celebrations have a habit of ending up like that episode of The Bear, know that at least you’re not alone. “It is a tough time for a lot of families,” says clinical psychologist Elisabeth Shaw.
There are good reasons why Christmas lunch or dinner can be hard to navigate, Shaw says. For one: it’s a protracted event. For two: alcohol. “If you add drinking into the mix, there’s a real potential for people’s boundaries to be eroded over the course of a long meal that may not happen if it was just a quick afternoon tea.”
Maybe you have long-simmering tension with a parent or sibling; perhaps someone’s nose is already out of joint about where this year’s lunch was hosted or what’s on the menu. Or it could be that everything is fine until a certain aunt makes her views on vaccination known, and then all hell breaks loose.
You could quickly change the subject – just, er, probably not to climate change, the ongoing wars or any of the other urgent but potentially divisive issues that have been in the news this year.
So if you’re about to walk into what could be a volatile Christmas celebration, how can you arrive ready to de-escalate an argument before it takes off? We asked the professionals – a lot of them – for their advice.
Advanced preparations for peace
Shaw says spending some time on yourself is the most important thing to do in anticipation of a stressful event.
Instead of working yourself up wondering what offensive thing grandad might say this year, she recommends taking some time to map your own potential trigger points, reflecting on what you want to do differently this time around and how you would like the day to end.
“That’s going to be your strongest resource or tool going in – to get yourself ready.”
If there’s a particular argument that plays out every year, you might want to prepare a light – but firm – reply that deflects and moves the conversation quickly along. “It may well be that you’ll always have the aunt who asks you why you aren’t married. Say, ‘Look, I know, you’ve said that before, but I’m not going to bite this year,’” Shaw says. “Try to make that a bit of a teasing reply, but a very clear boundary set.”
You might also recruit a family member ahead of time, “not to draw battle lines”, but to help you in swiftly changing the topic should a familiar line of questioning begin.
It’s OK to go in with an escape plan, Shaw says. “You could say in advance to the family, ‘I’ve got something else on, I need to leave by 3pm’. And that way, everybody’s prepared for it, and you can slip out without it being a storm-out moment.”
And managing your own drinking is important “if you know an event is going to be provocative,” Shaw says. “Because if you’re stressed and you drink more, you’re not always well placed to use any of these tips.”
Stopping an argument before it kicks off
Alice Dwyer, a maitre d’ who has worked in fine dining restaurants for over a decade believes the key to avoiding a conflict is not letting a stack of little grievances pile up.
“The biggest complaints come from a series of small events,” she says. When training waitstaff, she instructs them to watch out for little slights, then either make sure the rest of a customer’s experience goes smoothly or “solve what’s already happened”. If those things can happen “then we will avoid that conflict,” she says.
In a restaurant, that might mean sending over a complimentary glass of bubbles if the meal is running late. On Christmas, that means attending to people’s emotional (and dietary) needs. If your vegetarian sister has had to skip entree “and you can already tell that she’s feeling left out” she suggests addressing it directly. Say: “‘Oh, hey, I’ve known that there’s some cheese in the fridge … how about I get that out now for you?’ You will immediately diffuse the tension and the situation.”
Dwyer’s other tip for keeping large groups of people happy at once? “Making sure that everyone has a substantial amount of beverage in front of them always works very well.” (Yes, this advice conflicts with Shaw’s. Choose your own adventure.)
Regulating your own emotions
If you find yourself in a conversation that’s pushing your buttons, Daniel L Shapiro, a conflict resolution expert who founded and serves as director of the Harvard International Negotiation Program and literally wrote the book on negotiation, advises “going to the balcony”. A mental one, that is.
“In my mind, we’re going to pretend that this interaction between me and the other person is happening on stage and I’m watching that interaction from the balcony. I’m thinking, what’s going on? What needs to happen? And getting a little bit of distance from it.
“That can give me the breathing space to think more clearly about how to respond constructively.”
He would actually advise not running away to a physical balcony. There’s the danger, Shapiro says, that if you go outside to ruminate on what’s happened – or call a friend to vent about it – you’re “going to come back to the dinner table 20 minutes later twice as upset”.
Shaw agrees that giving yourself a mini time-out may not work as well as you want it to. But you could, she says, “download a three-minute meditation, or something that’s very brief, where it truly is your happy place. And just say you need to take a call, and retreat and listen to that to calm yourself.”
De-escalating a fight once its begun
If an argument does erupt, Shaw says the quickest way out is to consider how each party might back down without damaging their pride. Which is to say: don’t tell them off too abruptly or fire shots back.
“You’ve just got to think of how you get out of the moment for both of us,” she says. “Not shaming the person by making them sound crazy or out of line, even if they are. I think it’s just about trying to draw their attention to, ‘here we are in a group, and we want to have a nice day’.”
Saranne Segal, a legal conflict mediator, says you probably just “need to let that other person unload” and then respond calmly.
“Generally speaking, resolving conflict is about hearing the other side and letting everyone be heard and validated,” Segal says. “If you can just sit there in silence and hear what they have to say and have some empathy, it shouldn’t get to the point where there is a nuclear reaction.”
If things do go nuclear, Anna Wang, a high-end wedding planner who has smoothed over behind-the-scenes bumps for thousands of couples, suggests offering a hug and apology, even if you know you’re not in the wrong. “If it’s the bride, I’ll often go, ‘I’m sorry that you’re upset’. You don’t necessarily say, ‘I’m sorry I made you upset.’”
“Sometimes, you can’t calm someone down. You’ve just gotta let them yell it out.”
If you’re watching two warring family members go at it, you might try to delicately separate them, Wang says. “Say: ‘Oh, you know what, I forgot something in the kitchen. Can you come help me bring it?’”
Presents left in the car is another convenient excuse to create distance. “Just take them away,” Wang says.
Dwyer agrees that some one-on-one time might help. Taking someone into another room so you can make them feel heard and not judged is “really important”, she says. “Let them say their piece. And then once they feel like they’ve been listened to … they can get back to enjoying themselves.”
What to do after a blow up
So, your mum and sister have just screamed the house down, but the turkey is still in the oven. Can you all get back to having fun?
“The way that we talk about it in restaurants is you just have to carry on,” Dwyer says. “And you have to almost overcompensate for the awkwardness … just go around and act as if everything’s normal.” Take extra care not to ignore any wounded parties, she says, just engage with someone who is upset as you normally would.
Wang adds that you might also like to distract everyone by swiftly moving along to the next item on the agenda, like making a big song and dance about bringing out the Christmas pudding or pavlova.
Of course, some fights are an immediate day-ender. In the aftermath of a particularly painful argument, the first thing you should do is be kind to yourself, says Shaw.
“[Don’t] go into self-judgement and start to feel worse as a result … just say, ‘Well, that was awful, all my energy has to go into self-care and recovery.’”
Shaw suggests reaching out to a friend to validate what happened and calm yourself down. You might avoid, however, talking to a family member who was present for the blow-up, as “people at the event itself may have mixed feelings about what happened” and the immediate aftermath of an argument probably isn’t the moment you want to feel scolded.
Similarly, if it was a sibling or partner in the firing line (or taking shots), try to be supportive and nonjudgmental.
“If you do think that your family member could have handled themselves better, it’s important to just be a little bit gentle around that,” Shaw says. “If someone is still very upset, they may not be open to feedback at that time.”
And remember: if this Christmas is a bust, there’s always next year.
