So: how’s it going? Lunch all great? Eye-rolling at that M&S Nut Roast for one all done? Socks gratefully received? Good. Now it’s time for your family to ask you to explain – kid-’splain, if you will – all those things they’ve been reading about in the Sunday papers all year. The key, really, for the benefit of all present, is to shut these avenues of discussion down as quickly as possible. With that in mind, here’s a guide to how you can do just that.
Taylor Swift
Do not, repeat not, attempt an analogy with an icon from times past, ie ‘She is my/this/our generation’s Bob Dylan’. This way only madness and mulled wine-fuelled vitriol lie. Plus, if a song-for-song, head-to-head challenge is initiated you’re definitely going to lose: if only because you’ll be lucky to get through the first two-and-a-half minutes of ‘All Too Well’ before it gets swapped out for the whole of ‘Blonde On Blonde’. Instead, rather than showing them the TIME profile, just steal and fire off a bunch of the zingers from the TIME profile – “She’s the last monoculture left in our stratified world” is my current fave – and move on to the next convo topic, because… well, how would you respond to that?
Just Stop OilThe key thing to understand here is that the more senior contingent of your family are, day in day out, only being given the highlights reel of the admittedly-quite-silly stuff, ie some guy exploding orange paint at a snooker championship or a bunch of future Oxbridge types sellotaping themselves to a Rothko. The best way to go at this is to describe the above guys as the extremist wing of an otherwise right-thinking and important organisation, ie similar to what The Cult Of Suella/LIz is to the Tory party. I mean, that isn’t strictly accurate. But it will shut this one down.
Rishi SunakWeirdly, your parents find the same things annoying about our current PM as you do: the too-short trousers, the air of technocrat, the Silicon Valley-isms, the liking Taylor Swift, the owning of a Peloton. The difference is they find these things just annoying inherently, whereas you find the fact that they are so obviously all contrivances annoying. Best thing to do is just agree on the fact that this time next year he’ll be in San Fran anyway so who the hell cares.
Timothee Chalamet
Again, do not attempt a generational comparison: not least because proclaiming someone to be the new Brando is difficult when their current film is a Wonka origin story. Help is at hand here with one of the best episodes of The Graham Norton show ever, featuring Tom Hanks, Cher, Julia Roberts and La Chalamet, squeezed on the end of the couch and asked at one point, joking/not-jokingly, to go and get the sandwiches at one point. They’ll come for the former three. They’ll leave impressed and ready to tell the neighbours to check out ‘Bones & All’.
Star Wars (and more specifically the fact that they are still making Star Wars)
Tricky. There is little comeback to this one, as it’s a property that belongs to previous generations, was at its finest in times past, and is in severe danger of being overexposed into irrelevance. Best to just whack ‘Empire Strikes Back’ on and do some bonding (ie admit defeat).
Ed Sheeran
Nope, you don’t get it either.
Prince Harry and/or Meghan Markle
A slippery slope, as you of course find them unbearable now, too. This common ground could easily mutate into a nice post-dinner round of you-can’t-say-anything-these-days ranting. The key is to make it clear that it’s not their initial, ostensible purpose – to highlight that the monarchy is an archaic, probably-abolishable institution – that you’re not keen on, rather the way that they’ve gone about it. Would Kate and Wills be much better if they departed the palace? Probably not.
Barbie
If they went to see it, you’re in trouble: their thoughts on how brainwashing young pre-teens with feminist rhetoric could lead to all kinds of terrible things… as if the world is not currently full of quite terrible things. They will also have heard “My job is… just beach” which, however you slice it, is pretty irritating. Maybe just do the big reveal that the guitar on ‘I’m Just Ken’ is played by Slash: so if it’s not too pseudo-feminist for someone from Guns N’ Roses…
The election
Few have been the forthcoming elections with as predictable outcome as this one. So enjoy it! For once you can not get bogged down in ideology and Brexit and other such undiscussible things. For once, too, you can be mean-ish about Labour – “He needs to make it clear what he stands for!” – and not worry. Breaking bread and eating pigs in blankets while agreeing that Keir Starmer is a bit boring but maybe a bit boring is what we need right now: what better example of the spirit of Christmas could there be?
