Whether it’s pesky elves or unbearable family members, editor Lyndon Keane has flagged his top five taboo topics if peace and goodwill to all is to be maintained at the Christmas table on 25 December. Photo: Cape York Weekly.
It’s that time of year again, which means we’re about to embark on the annual masochistic endeavour that is surrounding ourselves with family and friends and attempting to survive Christmas lunch. As Ellen Griswold said in what is without doubt the greatest silly season movie of all time, National Lampon’s Christmas Vacation, “I don’t know what to say, except it’s Christmas and we’re all in misery”.
While it’s nigh on impossible to walk away from the table unscathed on 25 December, here are five lunch topics you must ban if you are to have any chance of escaping without a tongue lashing from Aunty Meryl, getting into a punch-up with your third cousin, or receiving prolonged disappointed dagger eyes from your parents.
Taboo topic 1: Politics
If there’s one topic that should be permanently banished on Christmas Day, it’s politics. Like democracy itself, there’s almost zero possibility of it ending well if it rears its ugly head, especially if festive season libations are involved.
If you happen to find your guests spiralling headfirst down the rabbit hole of political ponderance and don’t have time to create a suitable diversion – like faking a heart attack or lopping off a digit while carving the ham – the only thing you can do is get your hands on the strongest drink available and make a valiant attempt to steer the conversation away from things like Donald Trump, Bob Katter, Barnaby Joyce, and whether the teals are independents or cogs in a thinly-veiled party machine.
Taboo topic 2: Who brought what to lunch
We all know feeding the Christmas hoard is only achieved through an unequitable distribution of responsibilities, so can’t we just silently acknowledge it and pretend everyone at the table has done their bit to ensure the day goes off without a hitch?
Each and every one of us has an Uncle Ron, who will rock up year after year with a six-pack of his favourite beer tucked under one arm and waving a $5 packet of no-name fruit mince pies in the other hand, only to consume his body weight in ham and prawns, a dozen of someone else’s beers, two bottles of wine and some of the single malt whiskey the host had hidden and was saving for a special occasion. To top it all off, Uncle Ron always seems to stumble into the taxi at the end of festivities – or when he’s been asked to leave after making a politically incorrect comment to his niece’s current beau – attempting to hide the same half dozen stubbies he arrived with.
Taboo topic 3: Unresolved family grievances
Whether it’s castigating the drunken letch of a distant cousin who always wants to get just that little bit too close for a family photo, or debating whether your dad ever did pay back that $50 your Aunty Belinda loaned him in 1997, family beefs that have been simmering just below the surface since the last time Santa Claus visited are the most flammable type of Christmas conversation kindling.
There are two options when it comes to dealing with unresolved familial grievances on 25 December – putting down your beer to duke it out as guests form a fighting circle around you, or just repressing the anger and hurt like a normal person. Just make sure you make your decision before the backyard cricket begins.
Taboo topic 4: Housing prices
There’s no way to broach this subject without launching intergenerational warfare and finishing Christmas Day with someone setting fire to the table setting.
The problem is that the younger generations who have gathered for the annual family celebration of a kid being born in a barn will have converged on the paid-in-full dwelling of the patriarch or matriarch from either a rental property in the recently gentrified outer suburbs, or burdened by the financial albatross of a mortgage they will be paying off well into their twilight years. When they arrive at the house that was purchased for $17,000 in 1973 and is now worth $2.2 million, the first shots will be fired about housing affordability and how good people had it back in the day, at which point a battalion of Boomers will scoff, put down their wine glasses and mention 18 per cent interest rates.
If you allow this conversation to unfold, it will only end when punches are thrown, or someone storms off and drags the kids, their esky and the potato salad they made to the car.
Taboo topic 5: Whether Die Hard is a genuine Christmas movie
According to recent research data*, 57.29 per cent of 25 December fisticuffs are triggered by a fierce debate that has raged since what feels like time immemorial – whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie.
If it features a Santa hat, it absolutely slots into the Christmas movie genre. Sure, the aforementioned hat is adorning the head of a terrorist who’s just had his stocking stuffed by a Hollywood hero, but it’s there front and centre on the screen for all to see. Ho, ho, ho.
As John McClane muses in Die Hard 2 – which is also a Christmas movie, for the record – “just once, I’d like a regular, normal Christmas”. Wouldn’t we all, pal?
* Data 100 per cent a figment of my imagination
