Oft there is conflict when the family meets for Christmas. Corona makes the situation even more complicated, there is a threat of political dispute over vaccinations and lockdowns. Sometimes only mediators can help.
In late summer, a couple from southern Germany realized that the situation on the holidays this year could be particularly difficult, when the obligatory question arose as to who would visit whom this year, when and how. As in previous years, father and mother were supposed to go to their younger son and his family in the Rhineland. Only, she informed him, the older brother from the north would not be there this time because he had not yet been vaccinated against Corona. “It was a shock for the parents,” reports Christa Kober, who works as a family mediator in the Stuttgart region. “They didn’t want to just shut out the other son and were now desperate about what to do.”
Kober and her colleagues from the Federal Working Group for Family Mediation are often confronted with very similar questions this year. “We have the impression that our nerves are on edge because of the current situation,” she says. “And we see and feel that many are downright afraid of the holidays.” That is why the association responded with the “Peaceful holidays despite Corona” campaign. Until the end of December, mediators are available nationwide by telephone free of charge to give people the opportunity to talk about their concerns. “However, we are not discussing Corona,” explains Swetlana von Bismarck, the managing director of the working group. “We show people ways in which they can stay in contact with one another and reflect on what connects them beyond Corona.”
Like a family meeting
Christmas is the family’s annual general meeting, if you will. What has accumulated over the year is either put on the table or is kept quiet, which in both cases leads to conflicts in normal times. Corona is now adding something on top, says von Bismarck. Above all, the vaccination issue leads to disputes in families, in two ways: on the one hand, there is simply fear of infecting oneself or others, on the other hand, it is so politically charged that some family members no longer talk to each other at all. “But now at Christmas most of them want to get together and realize that it’s difficult.” A problem that worries the whole country cannot be solved under the tree, says von Bismarck. That is why she advises leaving out the topic of Corona and instead looking at what connects the family beyond it and finding alternative forms of being together.
That was also the solution with the parents from southern Germany, who had turned to Christa Kober. “For parents in particular, conflicts between children are stressful and difficult to bear,” she says. So she talked to both sons. The younger one, where the whole family traditionally met, had decided on his own not to invite the unvaccinated brother. “He wanted to protect his children and not endanger his wife, who works in the health industry, but lonely had made an unpopular decision that had consequences for everyone,” says Kober. In the conversation he understood how painful it was for the parents, who were torn as to which son they should visit for the festival. Parents want things to be fair, they are afraid of a collision between their children and, on top of that, when they are older, they are also worried that they will not see Christmas again.
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