The holidays are a wonderful time of the year. A time to be close to the ones you love, a time for giving, a time for reflecting, and most of all, a time for all of those family traditions. One of the most time honored tradition in my family is the holiday strife, especially amongst my siblings. I have two; an older and younger brother. Our favorite thing to do around the holidays is get together and verbally pound on each other. We complain about what we do, we complain about traveling and we complain about what our significant others should and should not be doing. And above all, when we get together, we love giving unsolicited advice about everything and everybody. The curious thing is we rarely act this way when we are apart. Put us together during a holiday and we are a bunch of cackling hissing witches sitting around a cauldron…what gives???
I am by no means a family psychologist or social worker, but I have done a lot of research on habits and it dawned on me; could this bizarre, almost toxic behavior be something as simple as a habit? Do we slip into the roles we have always held since we were children because it’s what we naturally do without any conscious thought? I decided to really look at our behavior to see if there was a pattern and there was.
The trigger is when something is brought up related to family matters, a significant other, an heirloom, a tradition, or whatever is perceived as a violation of the Harris code of brotherly conduct. This happens even more so around the holidays. Our behavioral habit is whoever is offended by the “violation” the most reaches out to the most agreeable brother. Then the two gang up on the offender until one of two things happen. The offending brother submits to the verbal pounding or stands their ground until everyone is pissed off. A variation on this theme is if we all agree someone or something has violated these ‘unwritten rules” and we target some poor soul with the combined wrath of all three of us. Don’t we sound like a bowl of holiday cheer!
I was noticing that this behavior affects a lot of people, especially the ones we love, so I really wanted to change it. My hunch was the whole vile sequence could be undone if only one of us changed our role in this unique holiday habit. So I decided to do an experiment the next time something like this came up. I didn’t have to wait long, last week we were in a HEATED disagreement. My older brother was livid with my younger brother and both of them got me involved to “fix it.” A three-way conference call ensued at 8:00 p.m. that night.
The Experiment
The trigger for this was a disagreement of how a family matter should be handled. Our normal holiday habit is as follows:
(To protect the identity and in some cases the dignity of each brother, I have assigned each person a letter of the alphabet. Warning alcohol can skew the results and should best be avoided at all cost if you are trying to replicate this experiment.)
- Brother A accuses Brother B of being an idiot about ____________.
- Brother A seeks validation from Brother C that brother B is an idiot about ___________.
- Brother A and C agree and decide to gang up on Brother B.
- Brother B submits, gets pissed off, or has his feelings hurt.
- Brother A &C feel like brother B has learned a valuable lesson and is no longer partaking in the idiotic behavior????
New Approach
- Brother A accuses Brother B of being an idiot about __________.
- Brother A seeks validation from Brother C that brother B is an idiot about______________.
- Brother A is baffled when Brother C chooses not to participate in the pile on but rather agrees to listen intently to both sides and offers no opinion.
- Brother A now seeks validation from Brother B that Brother C is acting very strangely.
- Brother B validates Brother A’s findings.
- Brother A and Brother B have an adult conversation.
- Brother A, Brother B, and Brother C come to an agreement and have a non-event???
It actually worked! It was mind blowing. No one got loud, no one’s feelings were hurt, everyone felt like their side was heard. It was like we had a little holiday miracle…and it was! Now to be honest I did let one of my brothers in on my experiment before we started in the hopes of getting the most positive results. What we all learned was that we tend to lapse back into our childhood roles and habits even though we are grown men. By changing one little way of how we interact, it resulted in a huge and positive difference. If you are expecting similar holiday strife this season, try this experiment and see if you can create a new holiday habit. One of peace on earth and good will towards brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers and the rest of the family…because that’s what the holidays are really all about.
If you have any interesting holiday strife stories, go to our Facebook page and share it. We would love to hear about them so I know I’m not the only one out there. 🙂
