Ah, the holidays. Nothing brings out that feeling of family togetherness quite like listening to your racist Uncle Ted, five beers deep, expounding on the brilliance of Donald Trump's proposed immigration policies while your vegan cousin sits miserably pushing butter-laced mashed potatoes around her plate, just hoping no one asks her to explain what "genderqueer" means again.
Considering the maelstrom of hurt feelings and hurled silverware that can result from bringing politics or religion into a large family dinner setting, we here at KQED Pop thought it might be nice to provide readers with a cheat sheet of alternative discussion topics.
Feel free to print this out and bring it along to your own family dinner -- or hell, make copies and tuck one beside each attendee's napkin. You might just become the most popular dinner guest of all time.
- Star Wars
- Aziz Ansari
- The weather
- Pets
- Cute videos of pets (yours or anonymous internet-famous ones)
- Interior decoration
- Coffee, and the particulars of which brands and styles everyone likes
- "Antiques Roadshow"
- Rachael Ray
- Pharrell
- Muppets
- Candy Crush
- Emojis
- An emoji being Oxford Dictionaries' "word of the year"
- Stephen Curry
- Riley Curry
- Adele
- The yardwork/garden situation, if any, at the home you're currently dining in
- What any present school-age children are studying in school
- Traffic/road conditions
- Ira Glass and/or This American Life
- Redwood trees
- Minor health problems
- Insoles
- Any cute kid anyone saw doing anything on Ellen
- The Peanuts Movie
- The old days
- Ornette Coleman
- The food you're currently eating
- Family members who aren't there
