What Makes a Holiday a Holiday?
When I think about Thanksgiving, I cannot imagine it without stuffing. Now, I’m given to understand that it cannot actually be called “stuffing” without it being stuffed into a turkey, but my family calls it stuffing and it comes from a red box with the words “Stove Top” written on the front. I think I could just have a plate of stuffing, and sit with my dad, cousins, and uncles watching football in the den or playing in a Scrabble tournament or talking with my great aunts and uncles about growing up on the farm, and I would feel like Thanksgiving had happened. And I know that you probably have different and no less important family gathering traditions.
The Purposeful Gathering
In her book The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker discusses why we gather. “We gather to solve problems we can’t solve on our own. We gather to celebrate, to mourn, and to mark transitions. We gather to make decisions. We gather because we need one another. We gather to show strength. We gather to honor and acknowledge. We gather to build companies and schools and neighborhoods. We gather to welcome, and we gather to say goodbye.”
Parker goes on to say that while people gathering together is important, what is perhaps more important is understanding why you are gathering. Have you ever been to a meeting for work and then walked away thinking, “I’m not quite sure what that was for?” or seen the pretend trophy for “Attending a Meeting that Could Have Been Done Over Email?” Meetings like these probably lacked purpose. Parker further drives home her point about purpose when she reminds us that a category is not the same as a purpose, meaning “the holidays” may not be a good enough reason for gathering. We often focus on logistics when we could be turning our attention to purpose. In these times when gathering is, by public health standards, considered dangerous, that we have the opportunity to examine why we gather, particularly with people that we may disagree with.
Parker asks us to drill deeper as to why a gathering is important until the purpose of the gathering becomes clear. She then encourages us to come up with a purpose that is “specific, unique, and disputable.”
The 2020 Problem: Election
The reason this is important is that when I think of the Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, or other holiday gatherings right after a difficult election, my anxiety shoots through the roof. Many of us have those family members that are upset about the outcome of an election and elated about the outcome of an election. The 2020 election has been arguably one of the more contentious elections in living memory. The phrase “We are a divided nation,” gets bandied about as though it was a foregone conclusion. In fact, beyond the Thanksgiving table, there were many clergy members experienced significantly elevated anxiety as they were preparing some sort of address to their faith communities after the election was called. The term “purple congregations,” has now become synonymous with some politically divided faith communities, where there are people on both sides of the political spectrum, which are commonly referred to as “red” and “blue.”
The 2020 Problem: Dehumanization
There are many that understandably believe that the “other side” is dehumanizing to certain groups of people. This is a reality. It’s not made up. As an interfaith organization, Texas Impact does not support any dehumanizing actions. Obviously, the extremes of dehumanizing result in genocides. But the ideas and prejudice that fuel dehumanizing actions can be a part of everyday life and have no place in dialogue. Name-calling, stereotypes (based in most types of “-isms” like racism), projection, and any type of action or feeling that leads one to view someone not as a fellow human but an enemy, a subhuman, or reduced to the sum of their expressed or perceived ideas.
Check out Dr. Brene Brown’s article on dehumanizing language
The 2020 Problem: Social Media
Whether in our faith communities or within our own families, ignoring problems or trying to sweep them under the rug does not mean that they disappear. In fact, often it can make them worse. Views spouted on social media instead of in places where meaningful embodied conversations can happen, where meaningful gatherings can happen, can cause more harm than good. Dehumanization can happen easily on these formats because we are not looking at people, just words.
The 2020 Problem: Zoom
In addition, some families or friends may be meeting over Zoom instead of in person, which will keep them away from a possible coronavirus transmission, but this may not be the year to expect a meaningful conversation. Zoom was created with this purpose, “Zoom helps businesses and organizations bring their teams together in a frictionless environment to get more done.” And while many faith communities and families are now repurposing this tool, it was originally created to get through meetings more efficiently, and many familial or religious gatherings do not have efficiency in their purpose. The cooking together in the kitchen, the laughing around old pictures, the children playing together, the hugs, the singing, the serious discussions, the caring for one another in grief and joy, and the warmth provide the comforts of the holidays which have now been labeled as risky because of the coronavirus.
In addition, when difficult conversations happen in-person, there tends to be an opportunity to step away, to catch your breath and calm yourself, but if your family decides to meet on Zoom, it’s difficult to walk away and still be connected.
What Do We Do?
We are in strange times. We are dealing with rusty, out of practice social skills having not experiencing regular opportunities for in-person gatherings. We are torn apart by the threat of a virus that has killed over 1 million people worldwide, divided as a country, and witness to an election that leaves people feeling that if you’re not on the blue team, you’re on the red team and vice versa. So what do we do?
Finding Purpose
You may want to start with finding a purpose for your gathering, and please understand that your purpose may change throughout the gathering. You may want to choose to set a purpose as a family or to write the purpose on the invitation. What is true: unsaid purposes guarantee that there will be misunderstanding about the purpose. If you find yourself in a space with competing expectations, you can explicitly state the purpose or you could make a game out of it. Playing “Why is my cousin here?” or “For what purpose did grandma show up to this?” could be a fun exercise to help you humanize your family once again.
You could also announce your purpose and the reasoning behind it, “Family, it’s been a tough year. Instead of focusing on the places that divide us, let’s focus on the comforts of being around one another. We can take other opportunities for intellectual discussions and debates. For this gathering, let’s focus on the comforts of being in one another’s presence.” Even if your purpose for that specific family gathering is not on peacemaking, it is encouraged to have other conversations that lend themselves to peacemaking.
If conflict arises, it is okay, and if you want to switch the purpose of the gathering mid-stream, that is okay. Just make sure everyone is aware about what is happening and establish ground rules.