How can I learn to get along with my family again?

I actually think that what you call calmness and politeness are trigger behaviors that are aggravating the problem. You are reinforcing your, for lack of a better word, differentness by acting like they are monkeys in the zoo and you are the anthropologist trying to understand their strange ways from your superior perspective. It seems like they are all enjoying themselves and just doing whatever they normally would. If you don't like what they're doing, you might want to try being in their faces about it a little more. And you know what, you probably do this unconsciously when it is just your siblings and your parents anyway. You just tell your brother to knock it off or roll your eyes with the others, and that's why you all get along. But when the aunts and uncles come along, maybe because you feel like you should be on your best behavior, you start using textbook solutions for diffusing tension (when this happens, I feel this way) instead of just saying, "Hey, I'm watching this show, and I sat through yours, so could you quiet down while I watch mine?" Be direct, don't stand on ceremony, and EXPECT to be treated like an adult, because you are one. But recognize that being an adult doesn't mean being sanctimonious or superior, either. You aren't bringing civilization to the savages, you're eating with your family. Oh, and by the way, for heaven's sake, don't run off to your room if your brother does something you don't like! You're the oldest sibling, you don't need to go sulk in another room. Just tell him, "Watch your bears later, we're eating here!"

I'm sorry I don't have any good advice, but my family is like yours. I just don't go. I have better, more healthy ways to spend the holidays than by sitting with people who think that making bigoted comments to make me unhappy is a great joke.

Walk the dogs with your dad?

There is no law, written or unwritten, that says individual adults must spend Xmas with their growing-up families. Strangely, many adults (maybe most adults) think it's absolutely a commandment to do so. This idiotic "tradition" must end. The way they treat your father is despicable. I agree with gracedissolved; stop visiting them for the holidays on a yearly basis. Make it every three years, every five years. You know you have friends you'd rather hang with for the day; they don't want to hang with their families either! You can bank on that.

Ever heard the phrase “resistance is part of power” (meaning that direct disagreement just serves to affirm the power structure in place)? I kept thinking of it while reading your story. My family is similar, and I’ll tell you that direct, vocal disagreement does not work for several reasons, no matter how polite, clear, or logical. It’s reactionary, it’s more evidence for their labeling you as difficult and disagreeable, and it doesn’t motivate them to change. We have this cultural image of the lone dissenter standing up in court and saying “objection!” and it’s a formal, powerfully ingrained image, but dissenting that way rarely works in real life. Think more along the lines of Gandhi. (seriously) What works for me (beyond avoiding them as much as possible and minimizing holiday time spent at home) is just living my life around them. Instead of responding negatively, I tune out and don’t respond. I come from the position of making them work to engage me as a general rule. I don’t try to ask questions I think they want me to ask them or otherwise make small talk, I don’t laugh and smile and smooth things over and go along. If they want to tell jokes that offend me, I don’t laugh, and excuse myself for a plausible reason without creating drama. If they tease me, or badger me, I respond honestly and briefly and let them get it out of their system and don’t get worked up, then go do something else. I ask for what I want and don’t fall all over myself preemptively to find a compromise. In other words, I withhold positive reinforcement unless they really deserve it. The more important thing, though, is that somewhere along the line my attitude shifted and I really, truly disengaged from them. It’s cold, yes, but I just had to stop caring so much. I had to distance myself. Sometimes in conversation I look directly around and cultivate the feeling that I’m 1000 miles away from the person across the table and my mind is already on tomorrow and this conversation is just so much fluff and nothingness. I imagine that they’re strangers and home is a hotel, and suddenly I’m not nearly as acutely embarrassed by them and don’t take their actions as a personal reflection on me. At first, the more obvious I was in this, the more they tried to get a rise out of me. But I know that losing my temper first means they win. Doing this long enough, combined with acting serious and grown-up and just taking care of my business while at my family home, has over time won me much more respect. Also, I realized that part of their attempting to gain control over me showed me how much power I had. Resistance is part of power, remember? Well, their resistance to my growing up, my adulthood and success showed me that I had more power and pull all along than I thought. Consider that some of it is insecurity and jealousy, and some of it is people going along with stronger personalities and picking on you-not because they don’t like you, but because they gain in some way by making you the scapegoat, possibly deflecting attention from themselves out of fear. If you win over the stronger personalities to your side, or get to a mental place where you can really disengage, the others are cake. Just visualize them collectively as getting smaller and father away and further into the past-picture them as an annoying little gnat or just flapping jaws spewing so many words. Think transcend and work around. The only way to win is not to play.

I spent many years trying different strategies in order to spend a "peaceful," "constructive" Christmas with my family. I eventually came to the conclusion that the family I had in mind when I booked my plane tickets and bought presents had nothing to do with reality. It was an ideal, based on a pastiche of childhood memories, TV shows and popular culture. The real family, though hardly a bunch of villains, required too much effort and produced too much stress for me. Unlike some of the others above, I don't see the point in taking the trouble to be with people with whom you must then make an enormous effort to ignore, "be above" or "resist." I choose not to go, and my holidays have become very peaceful indeed.

Make other plans for the holidays. When asked why you aren't coming home, explain it objectively and dispassionately. Don't make a big deal out of it. If they make a big deal about it, tell them you'd be happy to discuss it after the holidays, separate from the whole family.

I think some families have members who just... don't fit into the established hierarchy. I never understood as a child why one of my aunts never came home for Christmas. Now I *totally* get it. My family has started treating me as an adult enough to stop getting me the cool Christmas presents, but I've been trying to work through this for a few years and I still get lectures on how I load the dishwasher wrong. My much-younger sister-in-law, who they never knew as a child, does not get treated like this, which makes things even more peculiar. My new theory is that family holidays are best indulged only every few years, when it's been long enough that you're willing to put up with the BS bits. 2-3 times a year may be more than you're really cut out to handle, but on the up side, if you're only doing it that often now and you live some distance away, it's not hard to phase it back. Also, not staying with people when you are visiting is also helpful; I can't afford the hotel thing, but discussion of this same problem with other friends dealing with it has indicated that when you have another place to go where you can escape the family, it's easier to cope. But in a lot of ways, I think it's just a matter of trying not to force it to be something it isn't. I got raised to value certain things in a family that as an adult, I realize my family doesn't in fact have. It's an ongoing adjustment, but over time it's getting easier.

Walk the dogs with your dad? This. At least one other person in your family has found a way to carve some separate space out for himself. Whether or not you walk the dogs with him, he is modeling at least one way to be there, but not really be there, if you see what I mean. And, stop taking the bait. The anti-gay jokes are only made more funny when you get all angry about them, for example. There is a clear pattern to your interactions, and you are very much playing your part. If you want a different result, do something different -- you aren't going to get a different outcome by doing the same thing you've been doing for 30 years. Lastly, I agree with the people who have said that maybe you should visit your family less often. Sometimes a break lets everyone begin again with a cleaner slate, less imprisoned by the old patterns of interactions.