A cancellable feast? When politics sabotage Thanksgiving

Deb Miedema’s Thanksgiving dinner isn’t for amateurs. 

“We call it a feast. There are multiple tables full of food. There’s appetizers,” she said. “There’s the big traditional American Thanksgiving meal.”

With the forty some friends and family she usually invites, it’s also a big reunion. “Largely we are just sitting around and talking so we are really just there to reconnect with each other,” she said.

But this year Miedema isn’t up for reconnecting. She called off her big Thanksgiving celebration in an announcement on Facebook where her relatives could see it.

The reason? Some of her family members voted for President-elect Donald Trump. Miedema is not a fan. She supported Vice President Kamala Harris’ unsuccessful bid for the presidency.

“The prospect of looking into the faces of family members who are celebrating the election of a man who is a convicted felon with a history of abusing women, mocking people with disabilities and defrauding the public in more ways than I can count, is devastating,” she said.

Trump has said his felony convictions in a hush money case were politically motivated. His defense lawyers have argued the case should be dismissed altogether. Meanwhile, a judge has indefinitely delayed Trump’s sentencing.

Some family members agreed with Miedema’s decision to cancel the big Thanksgiving dinner. “And those are the people who, I suspect, voted the same way I did,” she said. “But I haven’t heard from the other folks. Just radio silence.”

Monica Guzman is hearing from a lot of people like Deb Miedema lately — liberals who are smarting in the wake of the presidential election.

Guzman is the host of A Braver Way podcast, which is an extension of Braver Angels. That’s the nonprofit that helps people bridge political divides. And it’s MPR News's partner on Talking Sense, which helps Minnesota have hard political conversations, better.

Guzman said it’s not just liberals who are struggling, though. She’s also hearing from conservatives who are hurting because they’re getting shut out by liberal family members.

“One woman told us that her grown sons say that she is provably racist and fascist and just don’t want her in their lives anymore,” Guzman said. “She’s saying, ‘Because of what Kamala said, they believe these things about me. And I am not celebrating the results of the election. I am wounded and I am hurt and I don’t know what to do.’”

Guzman said she’s also hearing a lot of fear from both sides. And that’s not surprising, she said, given both campaigns used fear to motivate people to vote.

Guzman said that strategy may win elections, but it leaves in its wake severed relationships.

“Fear saves us. It keeps us safe,” she said. “But it also makes it very hard to be steady, makes it hard to be creative, makes it hard to be collaborative.”

Guzman has advice for both sides as they head into the holidays. For conservatives, taking their liberal loved ones’ fears seriously is critical.

“One of the most awful assumptions that we make across our divide around elections, and especially this one, is ‘My side’s fears are real. Their side’s fears are imagined,’” she said. “That is one of the most disrespectful things you can do in this moment.”

And she cautions liberal voters against seeing their family members’ support for Trump as a personal attack.

“Can we at least separate that enough to be able to ask questions? Was suppressing your rights part of their equation?” she asked. “And so once you ask the question, it becomes a little bit easier to think of alternatives. Maybe their vote was not motivated by wanting to suppress you or wanting harm to come to you.”

Guzman said curiosity can help maintain connection in challenging conversations.

Deb Miedema isn’t quite ready for that, though. She said it’s hard for her to separate Trump from her family members who supported him.

But she hopes by Christmas, she’ll feel differently.

“As I’ve gotten a little bit of distance from it, I can see the possibility of Christmas, which again I host,” she said. “The prospect of not having that gathering for my family is probably more devastating than trying to navigate the difficulties of the polarization.”

For now, she’ll still celebrate Thanksgiving this year, just with four people instead of 40.

“My daughter and her fiancé are going to be off visiting with his family, so it’s just going to be me and my husband and our son, and then a friend from work is going to come over,” she said.

Despite the smaller gathering, she said they’ll still have a feast.

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