in response to a post on x.com

The Argument I Have With My Father Every Christmas

37 points · October 2026 · 1 response · 1 comment

It starts with the gravy. It has always started with the gravy. He makes it his way, which is wrong, and I say nothing, which is also wrong, and then at some point between the gravy and the pudding one of us says a sentence about the government, and we are off.

I used to think the argument was about the government. It is not. I have known this for years and I keep forgetting it at the table, because the argument is very good at looking like it is about the government. It has facts in it. It has things one of us read. It has, most years, a moment where one of us says that's not what I said and the other says it's what you meant, and that moment is the actual argument, and it has been the actual argument since I was fourteen.

What it is about is this: he thinks I left. I think he stayed. Both of these are true and neither is an accusation, but we have never found a way to say them that does not sound like one, and so we say them about the government instead, once a year, over gravy, and then we do the washing up together in a silence that is not unfriendly, and that is the closest we get.

My mother has a theory that the argument is how we say we love each other. I think that is too kind. I think the argument is how we avoid saying it, and that the washing up is how we say it, and that the two are so close together on the day that it is easy to mistake one for the other.

This year I am going to try something. I am going to let him have the gravy. I do not know what will happen. I suspect we will find another sentence.