“Take shelter in the bathroom”…America’s holiday ‘survival guide’ is no less than Korea’s - 경향신문

This article was translated by an AI tool. Feedback Here.

사진 크게보기 Feeling burdened by holidays and family gatherings is not unique to Korea. According to statistics surveyed by the American Psychiatric Association, quite a few people find family relationships themselves to be a source of stress. News image

“I do not want to go to a family gathering. Am I a bad person?” At first glance, it sounds like an ordinary worry for someone ahead of the holidays. But this story is a dilemma a 55-year-old American woman sent to the financial outlet MarketWatch’s advice column last November.

The contributor, using the pseudonym Single Sister, said that last Thanksgiving’s family dinner was filled with veiled criticism and rude remarks. She tried to avoid politics, but it did not go that way, and differences in political views led to arguments among family members. In the end, she confessed that dining with her family was not enjoyable at all, but draining and uncomfortable. Since then, whenever a family gathering is coming up, she said she feels distressed, thinking, “Do I have to go through this again?”

Why do families become harder to handle at holiday time?

Feeling pressure around holidays and family gatherings is not just a Korean story. The holiday, when family members come together, can actually become a time of stress everywhere. In a survey the American Psychiatric Association conducted last November of 2,203 U.S. adults, 41% answered, “I expect to be more stressed this holiday season than last year.” Another 32% said they were worried about ‘difficult family relationships.’ While 61% said they looked forward to seeing family and friends over the holidays, separate from that expectation, a significant number still found family relationships themselves to be a source of stress.

This concern is not limited to a few unusual individuals. U.S. media extensively covered family conflict and stress ahead of last year’s Thanksgiving. On November 26, The Washington Post introduced the experience of a reporter who asked experts for help, saying “the holidays are stressful,” and reported that when family gathers, a heavier load of emotional and practical burdens shows up all at once. ABC News the next day noted that some people jokingly call the Thanksgiving table ‘the Super Bowl of fighting with family,’ and introduced ways to avoid conflict.

The psychology magazine Psychology Today has also featured pieces on family conflict every Thanksgiving season. One asked, “Are you afraid of Thanksgiving?” and another offered coping strategies for those who perceive family gatherings not as enjoyable time but as obligatory and highly stressful occasions. The advice was to set conversation boundaries in advance to avoid debates over politics or family history, and to regulate your own responses rather than trying to control the other person’s behavior.

“I seeoh, could you pass that?”…survival strategies for dodging holiday conflicts

The public radio station WBUR also aired a program last November titled ‘Thanksgiving Survival Guide.’ It warned that complicated family dynamics can flare into conflict over turkey and stuffing, and introduced coping strategies for those who feel burdened by conversation with family. Psychotherapist Jeff Gunther explained that many of the people we see at Thanksgiving are beloved family, but that does not mean conflict disappears.

A realistic ‘survival guide’ offered concrete tips. When family brings up sensitive topics like politics or values, Gunther advised steering the conversation elsewhere rather than trying to persuade them, as in, “We think very differently. Please pass the potatoes.” He also introduced the deliberately minimal-response ‘gray rock’ techniqueresponding as impassively as a rock so you withdraw attention by not reacting emotionally to provocation or conflict. Even when you hear something hard to accept, keep replies brief“I see,” “That’s interesting”so there is no room for further argument.

If emotions run high, it helps to step away briefly under the pretext of doing the dishes or a grocery run, or to spend time with children or a pet. It is also fine to retreat for a moment to a space where you can be alone, like the bathroom. If a family gathering would truly harm your emotional well-being, the advice was that you do not have to attend at all. Tending to your own state takes priority over preserving tradition, and you can create new holiday routinesspending ‘Friendsgiving’ with friends or watching a movie at home.

But…if they are family, must we meet on the holidays?

The phrase ‘holiday survival guide’ in the United States is nothing new. The U.K.’s Guardian often runs letters before Thanksgiving or Christmas asking whether one must see “toxic” family during the holidays. Writer Christina Wyman confessed she used to look up a ‘holiday survival guide’ every year before Thanksgiving. She said the internet was flooded with memes depicting people hiding in the bathroom to avoid fights at the family table, or simply wishing dinner would end quickly.

For Wyman, COVID-19 became an unexpected escape hatch, because travel restrictions offered a justification for not meeting family. Facebook and Reddit filled with excuses and memes about avoiding family gatherings. That, in turn, led her to one question. Even in the West there is an expectation that family must be together during the holidays no matter what, but why had she, as an adult, never considered her right to decline holidays with family?

Clinical psychologist Lindsay Gibson, who practices in Virginia, told the Guardian that going back home to preserve family bonds does not necessarily create a healthy relationship. If every trip home ends in fighting and resentment, simply being physically in the same place may not help preserve the relationship at all.

Thanksgiving and Chuseok differ in food, scenery, and how families meet. But it is the same that long-simmering conflicts can resurface when relatives finally gather, and that some people feel more exhausted when they meet than when they do not. If the United States even has separate “holiday survival guides,” then finding it hard to meet family during the holidays may not be a peculiar scene in any one country. Leting go, first, of the expectation that everyone must be happy during the holidaysperhaps that is the most realistic advice America’s ‘survival guide’ offers to those of us who have just spent a holiday and are about to face the next.