Spicy questions for the holidays
How to turn up the heat at the dinner table
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Tis the season of family gatherings. It’s the season for family members to ask uncomfortable questions of each other. It’s the season for uncles and aunts to let loose their hottest of hot takes. There’s a popular narrative out there that these are conversations to “navigate” or “get through.” That take is for children. Here at A Man’s Work we celebrate Spicy Uncles, Spicy Aunts, and their allies.
This issue is devoted to making your holiday dinner table as intimate and uncomfortable as folks can stomach. It is a guide for how to be that person your younger relatives will need to navigate. The following is a list of activities and questions that are guaranteed to raise the emotional stakes.
The Hot Take Game
If Spicy Uncles created a dinner table game in a laboratory, this game is what I’d expect. It comes courtesy of my cousin Patrick, a bonafide Spicy Uncle. Here are the rules:
Everyone at the table writes down a hot topic or question on a card. I’m talking stuff like “Is there an afterlife?,” “Is America headed for civil war?,” “How do you think the world will end?” My mind instinctively goes to spirituality and politics but there’s a million buttons to be pushed here.
The notecards get handed to someone to read. I recommend choosing the most opinionated uncle at the table. If he’s got a job with some decorum, he’s more likely to obey the rules here.
Opinionated Uncle reads the first notecard. You then go around the table, with each person sharing their honest opinion about the question. If it’s a yes or no question, stick to yes or no answers. If it’s more than a yes or no answer, you may need a timer to limit folks’ answers to something like 2 minutes a piece.
Here’s the kicker: there is no debate or follow up questions allowed. Once you’ve stated your opinion, you keep it moving. Everyone just has to marinate in the sea of spicy opinions.
Once all opinions are stated, Opinionated Uncle reads off the next notecard.
Scare the Children Rants
My girlfriend and her friends, all of whom qualify as spicy aunts, created this next one. Here’s the premise: everyone over the age of 30 has a municipal issue that they’ve simply had enough of, and can rant about if given the opportunity. If you don’t immediately know what yours is, know that it exists somewhere deep inside you. You just have to dig.
The more local the issue, the better. Here are some examples:
My girlfriend has had it with NYC traffic police who issue tickets for cars parked in front of defunct fire hydrants. It’s a grift!
My friend Tyler has had it with the decibel levels of the NYC subway. They’re loud as hell!
I’ve had it with New York State workers comp audits for small businesses. We tax manual labor 100x more than office work!
Everyone at the table gets a minute to rant about their local issue. If you have a family member with a yard sign protesting something like windmill construction, this is their time to shine. This rant has been nicknamed the “scare the children” rant because the whole point is to get a little unhinged and petty about it. Don’t be evenhanded. Let ‘em have it.
The Primary Question
My Primary Question is the question I ask myself the most. What do I feel compelled to do or think more often than not? When do I feel stress and what question do I have in the back of my head during those situations, making them more stressful?
A few examples of Primary Questions:
Do you like me?
Am I right?
Am I worthy?
How do I protect myself / my family?
You may or may not want to explain this, but 9 times out of 10, our Primary Question is tied up with some Mommy and Daddy issues. The whole game is a Trojan Horse to get at insecurities created in response to childhood experiences that for one reason or another, continue to carry disproportionate weight in our minds.
I talk more in depth about the origins of The Primary Question exercise here, but the idea is simply to go around and share what each person’s Primary Question is after a few minutes of thought.
I did this with my family a few years ago over Christmas. It got emotional in a powerful way, with insights I’ll remember forever. I highly recommend.
“I come from a people who…”
This final one is the simplest. All you do is go around the table, with each person finishing the sentence: “I come from a people who…” Folks can interpret the end of that sentence however they wish.
In my experience, most folks will take this prompt as an opportunity to talk about their ancestors, and all the positive and negative judgments they have of them. As a result, this game definitely gets interesting at a table with friends with different ancestors. It’s a rare portal into how folks think about whom they come from.
And for family events where most folks are talking about the same ancestors this game might seem redundant, but I wish I played this game with my grandparents so I could hear how they interpreted our ancestors. It’s also interesting to hear how siblings and different generations have different depictions of whom they come from.
If you have any suggestions for spicy games, I’d love to hear em. Respond to this email and I’ll include them in next edition of this.
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Thanks for sharing this, Johnny! I needed this example of good in the world.
Spicy game suggestion. OK, it is more like cinnamon. That is, a little sweet, but could get some folks heated: "In utopia..." and then everyone gets a turn to describe a specific way in which utopia would be an improvement on our current world. For example, "Groceries would be free! (With everyone involved in the supply chain amply compensated, of course.)"
For a saccharine version: the answers must be framed positively. So, you cannot just say X, Y, or Z would not exist. For example, if someone wanted to say, "We would not have prisons." Instead, they could say, "The justice system would be rehabilitative, with wrap-around medical, social, and financial support."