5 Tips for A Peaceful Thanksgiving
As Thanksgiving approaches, you may be preparing to pack up and travel across the country—or just across town—for a gathering with special people.
Or maybe you’re the host this year, opening your home to welcome family and friends into your personal space.
How do you feel about it?
As much as we would love for these gatherings to be an enjoyable time of family get-together, it doesn’t always turn out that way.
Even when everyone is getting along well, tensions can arise. And if family relationships are already not in their finest form, you might be expecting conflict.
If you’re feeling stressed about the upcoming holidays and family gatherings, what can you do to navigate potential conflicts?
Awareness: Noticing the Tension Points
According to a 2024 survey, the most common points of holiday tension are politics, past family grievances, relationships, finances, and parenting.
It’s not a stretch to say that at least one of these topics will come up in almost any family gathering.
Take time to notice other potential areas of conflict as well. These five may be the big ones, but there are usually more specific tension points in each family that should be taken into account.
Once you’ve noticed the tension points, you can think about how you want to show up at family gatherings and stay centered in calm.
You can’t prevent conflict from happening.
But you can change your own thoughts and reactions when the temperature starts to rise.
Putting It Into Practice
When faced with potential conflict, I always return to these five tips for navigating holiday gatherings:
1. Make and keep agreements. Don’t want to talk politics at the dinner table? Ask for an agreement about that. Need your kids to step up when it’s time to clean the kitchen? Talk about it in advance. Maybe your mom wants to set aside time to call Aunt Jane on Facetime with everyone joining in.
If conflict is on the horizon, making agreements allows you to set expectations about what you need from each other and what you are willing to commit to each other.
2. Ask for what you need. If you’re an introvert, you may need some time alone to recharge without fear of being judged. Or if you’re making the pilgrimage to your childhood home, you might want to hang out with friends you haven’t seen in years.
Whatever it is, you have the choice to either speak up or suffer in silence hoping someone will read your mind. They won’t. And it’s not their responsibility to read your mind. It’s your responsibility to ask for what you need.
3. Be intentional. Each morning and before each event, take a few minutes to breathe and set your intentions for how you want to be. Maybe you want to be more patient, kind, helpful or curious. If you want to NOT be defensive, think about what that means for what you DO want to be. Maybe it’s open, accepting, or forgiving.
You might also set intentions for what you want to do, such as playing DJ to keep the tunes coming, or making sure to include your socially awkward cousin in conversation. Choose a couple of intentions for your “to be” list and a couple for your “to do” list. By maintaining focus on just a few, you are more likely to remember and follow through on your intentions.
4. Be grateful. Have you ever noticed that you can’t be angry and grateful at the same time? It’s true! Practicing gratitude can increase your sense of positivity and peacefulness.
In moments of conflict, counting your blessings will shift your focus to what has gone right and all that you have to be grateful for. Be sure to include the big things (friends, family, pets) and some small things (mom’s chestnut dressing) when you make a written or mental gratitude list this holiday season.
5. Ask questions. Genuine curiosity is the antidote to stilted conversation. Be prepared with a few questions to keep things lively, and really listen as people open up to share their stories.
Here are a few that work well for the holiday season:
- What is your favorite holiday tradition?
- What is the accomplishment you are most proud of from the past year?
- Who is a person that has surprised or delighted you this year?
- What are you most looking forward to in the next year?
You can turn this into a game by writing out questions on small cards and scattering them around the dinner table. Or write out questions on slips of folded paper, put them in a bowl, and periodically ask a guest to draw a question for everyone to answer.
Before I go, I want to emphasize—these tips are not a ‘fix-all’ solution. You can control your own reactions, but you cannot control other people. You can’t control the outcomes. So, no matter what happens, try not to put too much pressure on yourself as you put these strategies into action.
How do you stay happy, centered and sane during the holidays? I’d love to hear your top tips.