Dreaming of a Red Christmas: How to Survive the Holidays

It always happens around the same time in the evening. I'm at a Christmas dinner with my extended family. Sometime between the second round of drinks and the start of the meal, my uncle starts his famous rant about smoking bans. He hits all the libertarian talking points in between gulps of lager: they're bad for business, they expand the role of government, they're paternalist, they're an invasion of privacy. It's unlikely that anyone at the table actually brought up the subject, and my uncle doesn't smoke. But declaring his utter loathing for those laws over the roast turkey and asparagus has turned into a holiday tradition. Like a battery-operated-blinking-light Christmas sweater, it's impossible to ignore. One year I made the mistake of calmly suggesting that smoking bans protect low-income servers who work long hours in bars and would not like to die of lung cancer. I was told they should find another job or “get over it.”

Ah the holidays. What is it about them that brings reactionary family members out of the woodwork? As if the anxiety of travel, money and weather weren't enough. As if the messages of, “Yay America! Yay Christianity! Go eat a lot and buy a lot and thank God you live in the U.S.!” weren't offensive enough. On top of the full frontal cheery assault that starts around mid-September, we now have to deal with in-laws who ask us what we think should be done about all the illegals jumping the border, oh and please pass the gravy.

The best I can give you in the way of surviving these trying times is a list of dos and donts, mostly from my own experience.

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