Thankful for keeping politics to yourself

There is a familiar saying that you can choose your friends, but not your family. For most of the year, that fact can feel like a blessing and a curse. During the holidays, when we squeeze around crowded tables, eat more than we should, and bring many personalities into one home, it should feel like a blessing.

- Dan Rene, Tribune News Service

Family members are the people who allow you to be yourself. You can be silly, serious, vulnerable or anything in between. Even when disagreements happen, you should be able to count on your relatives to come back together because of the experiences you share and the mutual respect you hold for one another. Families matter, and they deserve to be protected.

Nothing threatens that sense of protection faster than political conversations during a holiday gathering. Families are supposed to be places where people share values and offer one another unconditional love. That is the ideal we all hope for. In real life, though, those bonds can be fragile and easily strained.

In recent years, political conversations have become sharper, angrier and much more personal. Opinions that were once confined to online comment sections now spill into living rooms. Comments that people used to make anonymously from behind a screen now land directly on the feelings of siblings, cousins and in-laws. These moments do not lead to better understanding or healthier debate. Instead, they damage relationships and create lasting hurt.