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“Talking about politics at our family gatherings can be like smoking a cigarette at a gas station—there’s a good chance it will make the whole place explode,” the journalist Elizabeth Harris wrote last year. So she tried to approach these conversations like a reporter: “I wasn’t looking to have a back-and-forth; I was looking for information. I wanted to know what they thought and why.”

Politics isn’t the only topic that can feel impossible to discuss. Families struggle to talk about their history, about what they need from one another, about the things they regret or haven’t forgiven one another for. The holidays can sometimes feel like the powder keg Harris described, where everyone is trying to avoid saying the wrong thing. But maybe there’s another way. Today’s newsletter explores how to approach even the hardest family conversations.

On Family Conversations

The Questions We Don’t Ask Our Families but Should

By Elizabeth Keating

Many people don’t know very much about their older relatives. But if we don’t ask, we risk never knowing our own history. (From 2022)

Read the article.

How to Not Fight With Your Family About Politics

By Elizabeth Harris

This holiday, ask questions like a reporter.

Read the article.

Why We Speak More Weirdly at Home

By Kathryn Hymes

When people share a space, their collective experience can sprout its own vocabulary, known as a familect. (From 2021)

Read the article.

Still Curious? • Couples therapy, but for siblings: The practice isn’t common. Maybe it should be, Faith Hill wrote last year. • The longest relationships of our lives: As brothers and sisters grow up, what they do can determine whether they stay stuck in their childhood roles—or break free of them, Angela Chen wrote in 2023.

Other Diversions • The books that made us think the most this year • No NFL game has ever ended in a score of 36–23. • Colorful stars of all ages

PS

I recently asked readers to share a photo of something that sparks their sense of awe in the world. Today’s submission is from Karen P., who describes her view of “life in retirement at Sunrise Beach in Marshfield, Massachusetts.”

I’ll continue to feature your responses in the coming weeks.

— Isabel