Christmas conversations: Navigating those trickier moments across the dinner table

When the family gets together at Christmas, it’s usually a joyful, loving and warm experience.

Usually. But putting different generations of people together in the same room, along with a range of viewpoints on different issues, can make Christmas conversations challenging for some. If you think (x), but your loud and opinionated aunt or uncle thinks (y), there’s the very real possibility of an argument in between the main course and pudding at Christmas dinner - and nobody wants that.

If you need a little advice on piloting your way through some of the festive season’s trickier interactions, conversation expert and author Rob Kendall, whose book Watch Your Language deals with the struggles of talking to each other, is here to help make sure the only arguments you hear on 25 December are over those extra helpings of roast potatoes.

‘I’m a shy teenager. How do I join in a conversation with adults?’

Not everyone has the self-confidence to jump right in when people are talking about a subject that interests them, especially if those chatting are a generation or two above them.

Rob sympathises with anyone in that situation. He told Bitesize: “I certainly found, as someone who grew up being shy and introverted, and longed to be able to hold a room and take over a conversation, that I had to develop other strategies. And I think that is the point. Everyone is different.”

He continued: “So how do I get my voice heard? I always think the most important tools for somebody who is more reflective are to ask questions, and then listen.”

If that sounds a little confusing, Rob suggests going into a conversation with a question rather than a statement. Instead of jumping into a discussion with, for example: “Well, that’s all well and good, but what I think is,” consider something along the lines of: “Why do you think that about (the subject)? I’d be interested to know.”

Rob explained: “Then, you don’t have to worry so much about what the right thing to say is. You can participate fully in conversations - and people love to be heard.” He added: “I think being able to ask questions, open questions, that open up conversations and then being able to listen is probably one of the most important skills I developed.”

‘This conversation could get challenging - what do I do?’

People have opinions and they often differ. When a lot of people meet in one place you’ll probably hear these differences of opinion exchanged, and the Christmas dinner table is one of those places. Joining a conversation is one thing, but how do you make your point over the Brussels sprouts without someone getting annoyed? Rob has some advice.

“I think this is difficult at any age of life,” he said. “In my mind, if somebody is angry, anything where you say to them, ‘You know, it seems like you feel quite angry about this’, or, ‘It seems like you feel cross about this’ - what that does, it allows that person to feel heard about something. And what you tend to find is, immediately, the level of emotion in their voice switches."

That tactic of making someone feel recognised is, Rob explained, used in all sorts of everyday situations, such as sales conversations. Another tip he suggested is using somebody's name when you reply to them. It's another way of making them feel heard and can move a talk into a more positive place.

It's also important to remember that everyone is entitled to their own opinions. Even if you disagree with someone, there's no need to let that make a conversation confrontational or unfriendly. Always try to keep a discussion going - and ending - on good terms.

‘My relative has just said something incredibly offensive - how do I react?’

There will be times when somebody may say something that goes against what is commonly regarded as acceptable and you find offensive. During a family occasion, this can be one of the trickiest situations to handle and Bitesize also has a guide on what to do if you hear someone you know use racist language to describe another person.

These very awkward moments, whatever topic is being discussed, could be a time, Rob said, to make an excuse to remove yourself from the situation (perhaps a spontaneous trip to the loo?) in the hope that the conversation will have moved on by the time you return.

If things stay on the offensive side, Rob suggested: “In those situations, I think it’s quite hard sometimes to have real clarity of thought about the best way to deal with it. I would say there are various strategies.

“One is, you just divert the conversation. Sometimes, I would literally say, ‘Let’s change the subject because this probably isn’t going to go very well, so let’s move on,’ - I guess that’s probably the easiest one to do and the least uncomfortable.”

For another way around these encounters, Rob said: “It might be to say, ‘I’m surprised to hear you say that’.

“The reason why that works better than saying, ‘That’s an outrageous comment,’ is as soon as you say that, you turn it into a judgement or an opinion. Then you’re on a slippery slope, and I call that escalation. So rather than ‘you’ messages, such as, ‘how could you say that?’, turn it into an ‘I’ message; ‘I’m disappointed to hear you say that’.”

He continued: “You would hope that they would pick up on that signal, move on, or step back from what they said, or say ‘I didn’t really mean that.’

“Probably you want to avoid it being, ‘Do you remember that Christmas Day where everything spiralled and it got out of control and it ruined the whole day?’ - my tendency would be to try to do anything you can to avoid that happening in the moment.”

This article was published in December 2023