Humor for Surviving Family Holidays - Try Family Holiday Bingo!

Humor is an often-overlooked tool to help us through difficult times. In fact, the power of humor is often misunderstood. Psychologists researching laughter have taken a measured interest in the effects of humor only in the past couple of decades. However, evidence is quickly accumulating about how appreciating the lighter side can positively impact physical and emotional well-being.

Positive Humor

First, it is important to note that not all humor is good for us. Psychologists at the University of London identify two positive styles of humor: affiliate and self-enhancing (Martin et al., 2003). Affiliative humor is used to amuse others and build relationships in a benevolent, kind manner. It may be spontaneous jokes or witty banter to defuse tension. Self-enhancing humor is not aggressive or self-defeating. It is characterized by the ability to see silver linings and a good-natured attitude to deal with difficulty and stress. Those with self-enhancing humor often master a less common form of humor: crazy wisdom.

Crazy Wisdom

Used by both systemic and experiential therapists (e.g., Fritz Perls, Paul Watzlawick, Jay Haley, Carl Whitaker), crazy wisdom plays with opposites and logic to cut through the assumptions that keep us imprisoned, enabling us to break free of habitual ways of thinking. It shakes you from old patterns, wakes you up, and opens your mind to new possibilities.

Crazy wisdom does not refer to joking that carries a dark undertone or hurtful message - such humor breeds negativity. True crazy wisdom is fueled by love and opens the heart so that what was once rejected is now embraced, and what was once feared can be laughed at and even loved.

Dreading the Holidays 

For many, family holiday gatherings aren’t the stuff Christmas songs are made of. My clients often dread spending time with difficult personalities who predictably annoy and offend with the same behaviors year after year despite their best attempts to set health boundaries. 

Family Holiday Bingo

In such situations, I often recommend a crazy wisdom intervention: Family Holiday Bingo. This stealth version of the classic game offers a more humorous way to navigate predictable comments, conversations, digs, and conflict without getting pulled into old, unwanted patterns.

How Do You Play?

Decide whether you will play alone--or with a trusted partner or similarly aligned family member. Design a 5 x 5 bingo square, filling each square with some of the typical annoyances at your family gatherings. Remember to include a free space in the middle of the board.

If there are multiple players, create several versions by scrambling the options on each board.

Then, just like traditional bingo, each player checks off the predicted annoying behaviors (ideally on a password-protected device) until one person has filled an entire row, winning the game.

Why This Works

Family Holiday Bingo works for three reasons:

1. Awareness: Creating the Family Holiday Bingo is very therapeutic, even if you never use it. Writing everything down--in a playful yet concrete and specific format--suddenly sheds light on what is often a vague or unspoken experience. This is particularly helpful if there is "gaslighting" as part of the dynamic.

2. Agency: Although people with difficult personalities can be very upsetting, their behavior is typically more predictable than the average person's. The process of creating the bingo card highlights this predictability and externalizes it, especially if the bingo board is shared with someone else before the holiday event. Then, when the inevitable bad behavior happens, it is not "shocking" but rather "just as expected," reducing the sting.

3. Reframing: Family Holiday Bingo reframes what was once an annoying behavior as a personal "win" for you. For example, using the sample board below, when your mom comments about your weight, you get to check that off your bingo board and are one step closer to winning.

Don't Forget to Make It Fun!

Want to make it more fun? Sweeten the deal with a prize - like maybe a box of delicious chocolates!

Need inspiration?

Here's a sample Family Holidays Bingo Card:

Download Your Bingo Card

Humor + Crazy Wisdom - It's Good for You

Crazy wisdom is not just some sort of escapism - it is serious business. In fact, science informs us that such humor helps us weather difficulties and increases well-being. It also allows you to stop taking yourself and life so seriously - living more authentically by embracing what life is with all its paradoxes, mystery, darkness, and light. It keeps you laughing through good times and bad, through delays, roadblocks, failures, and fear.

Want More?

I have an entire chapter on Crazy Wisdom in my book, Mindfulness for Chocolate Lovers: A Lighthearted Way to Savor More Each Day. You can pick it up on Amazon or your favorite book retailer. Note: As an Amazon affiliate, I may earn a commission from qualifying purchases). 

My Mindfulness for Chocolate Lovers website offers free guided chocolate meditations and other resources to fuel your practice of crazy wisdom!

Want to Know More About Your Style of Humor?

Try taking this Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ) to better understand your own style of humor. Learning may help you to enhance humor as a tool for connection and coping.

Download Your Bingo Card

References

Gehart, D. (2019). Mindfulness for chocolate lovers: A lighthearted way to stress less and savor more each day. Rowman & Littlefield.

Martin R, Puhlik-Doris P, Larsen G, Gray J, Weir K. Individual differences in uses of humor and their relation to psychological well-being: Development of the Humor Styles Questionnaire. (2003). Journal of Research in Personality, 37, 48-75.