How to avoid a pandemic-induced family bust-up this Christmas

It's not enough to put all your energy into hitting mute on Aunt Agatha's anti-government tirade. Check in with what you're bringing to the table, too. Photo / Getty Images

The intention of a festive family gathering is to enjoy good food and drink and make the most of each others' company, right? But such is the nature of families that even at the best of times we can find ourselves embroiled in a less than merry debate at the Christmas dinner table.

What, then - after an intense year that has revealed opposing stances among families on some pretty serious topics - are we in for when we all sit down for a meal together this Christmas?

The Herald spoke to former lead police negotiator, Lance Burdett, about how to handle that aggressive aunt or conspiracy-theorist cousin who may, with the addition of festive stress and that far-too-early glass of bubbles on board, be particularly volatile on the 25th.

Burdett says, this year especially, we should prepare for talk across the Christmas turkey to become more heated than usual.

"At the moment, everybody's feeling the pressure of the last year-and-a-half to two years. And with the increased pressure of jabs and boosters and people feeling cornered and everybody a little bit brittle, Christmas time is usually when things come to the fore. The chances are there could be a little bit more debate about what's happening in the world."

So if your MO for Christmas day is to keep the peace, Burdett says there are some key ways to help conversations remain convivial.

"These days it's a little bit different. We used to be a bit more direct. We used to say things like, 'it's Christmas, let's move on, let's ignore these, let's not bring politics in,' that sort of thing.

"The sentence I prefer people to use is, 'isn't it great we can come together on Christmas?' The idea is that you want to get the person to think about what they've said and their behaviour. When we say things from our emotional brain, our limbic system, we often say things we might later regret. We've had a sudden impulse."

Your job, then, says Burdett, is to navigate that person back to the logic part of their brain so they think about their actions or outburst without you actually pointing it out to them.

"It's about getting the other person to think about the full situation, rather than just what they're talking about. We're bringing them into their pre-frontal cortex where decisions are made, the calm part of the brain, our logic, basically.

"What we can do is ask them a question - just to get them to think, 'okay, let's not talk about that'. It gets them off topic. Again, by saying, 'isn't it great that we can all come together for this one special day?' it's something that gets them to think, well, this is the one time of year where we are all together, aren't we lucky? Without actually saying, 'aren't we lucky?'. We use what's called, in our industry, humility. But basically it's humanity."

He warns against being too direct with people. This is not the climate for such an approach.

"If you say, 'hey, listen, that's inappropriate', it's just going to push the boundaries. What we're finding in the industry today is if you push people, they're pushing back twice as hard."

Burdett's tip instead is "the higher the emotion, the shorter your response" - and to have your "little fire extinguisher" at the ready.

"If somebody's absolutely aggressive and getting quite overheated, all you say is, 'You're right. It's important we have different viewpoints.' All I've said is, 'you're right. But you're actually not.' Again, just by telling someone they're right, then leaving it for a moment, that gets them to think. There's nothing to fight with. It's a little fire extinguisher, just cool the emotion."

But it's not enough to put all your energy into hitting mute on Aunt Agatha's anti-government tirade. Check in with what you're bringing to the table too, says Burdett.

"Be mindful of yourself and what you say. We all have a bias. We all have our own determination of the world. Actually it's been going on for centuries at Christmas time. It's about balancing the expectations with reality. Enjoy the imperfectness, if that makes sense. The turkey might be overcooked or someone might have a little bit too much to drink or a child might have a tantrum ... it's about understanding yourself first. Tell yourself you're not going to react. If you think about it like driving a car, that everybody else is a potential danger so I will drive properly."

And while you may be doing your darndest to keep things jovial and simultaneously have your infographics ready to challenge that cousin, Burdett says it is important to be respectful of other people's opinions.

"Our opinion is not necessarily right. You might say, 'isn't it great that we can talk about this stuff in a personal and private conversation, rather than public'. That reminds people that they are at home and with family. It's a personal thing. There's no need to come aggressively," says Burdett.

Ultimately, it's important to recognise that we are, globally, all feeling on edge.

"This is not just a New Zealand thing," says Burdett. "Violence has escalated 30 per cent globally. After the last lockdown we had, homicides went up around 20 per cent. You'll see the same thing starting to happen in Auckland. It's a phenomenon around the world when you use lockdowns and when we come out, we tend to have a backlash of sorts.

"What's happening in the world is people are feeling cornered. Both those who have been vaccinated and the ones who are unvaccinated. We've got boosters coming - well, what's that? Are we going to have another one? It's in our subconscious, that part of the brain that looks to the future to keep us safe. And because it can't find safety because the world is changing faster than our brain can keep up, it's going into overdrive. So we're finding we can't get to sleep, or we're waking up three or four times in the night, or waking up in the morning thinking we haven't slept. Because our brain is working absolutely flat out to try and find our safe way forward. So we're in mild fight or flight."

Burdett acknowledges Christmas is always a high stress time and predicts this year we are likely to see even more emotional extremes around the table than usual.

"People are either going to be exuberant and just overjoyed and go too far that way, or they're going to be angry. When you're being put under pressure, it has to be released somehow."