Thanksgiving is next week. But don’t worry: You’re probably not going to have to deal with an obnoxious political free-for-all at dinner this year.
Each year, there is plenty of media coverage over the prospect of people talking about politics at the Thanksgiving dinner table and having arguments because they have different views. It’s not something that normal people want happening at the dinner table, nor is it something that normally happens, regardless of how many think pieces are pumped out about it.
A few examples of these articles this year include a guide from WBUR titled “Preparing for difficult pandemic conversations at Thanksgiving dinner? Ask an expert your questions,” an opinion piece from Baptist News Global titled “Tips for having a Thanksgiving Dinner conversation about immigrants without choking,” and an article in which Radio Iowa interviewed a college professor titled “U-I expert discusses how to handle vaccination talk during the holidays.”
Maybe some people do have an obnoxious liberal hipster child who loves Bernie Sanders and wants to call their relatives racist, sexist, bigoted, and transphobic homophobes. Or maybe the Alex Jones-listening uncle wants to go on a rant about how the coronavirus is fake, vaccinated people are morons, and the government wants to put people in camps run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Generally, people just want to eat turkey, stuffing, and pie and watch the Detroit Lions lose to the Chicago Bears. The polls support that conclusion.
A 2018 poll from the Associated Press found that just 9% of parents with adolescent/young adult children had a holiday gathering ruined by a political disagreement. This means it wasn’t true for more than 90% of those parents.
Meanwhile, a 2018 poll from CBS News found that just 15% were “looking forward” to talking about politics at the Thanksgiving dinner table; it’s a small number that also doesn’t take into account smaller gatherings where people mostly agree on politics and are therefore more likely to have a civil discussion.
And a 2017 Harris poll found that only 10% of people would be involved in a heated political debate over their Thanksgiving meal.
No matter what your political views are, try not to start an argument and ruin things for everyone. It’s unlikely that this will happen, so it’s time for the media to stop pushing this misguided narrative. If they did, then maybe it would mean less division at the dinner table.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a political reporter for the New Boston Post in Massachusetts. He is also a freelance writer who has been published in USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Federalist, and a number of other outlets.
