Friday, December 27, 2013

18.Why Families Fight During Holidays

In this article by Olga Khazan she explores why families fight during holidays. She has four main subtitles that she explores throughout her essay. Her thesis is to prove why families are more prone to fight during Christmas and the New Year. First she talks about The Narcissism of Small Differences and gives the example of civil wars. Usually when there is a tight knit community of similar people the fights are over minuscular differences and according to Sigmund Freud they are done in order to focus on the things that are different form each other because they all seek uniqueness. Social allergens according to Joe Palca who wrote a book on why people get annoyed, repetitive gestures that can cause a big reaction. The accumulative amount of these annoyances can lead to huge fights. Thirdly there is the passive aggressions “"Some of the people being demeaned as passive-aggressive are in fact being extremely careful not to commit mistakes, a strategy that has been successful for them," Dr. E. Tory Higgins, director of the Motivation Science Center at Columbia University, told the New York Times.” Lastly there is sibling rivalry that does not end after childhood, actually it continues until their adulthood even if they do not live with their parents anymore. Khazan ends her article talking about how to avoid these conflicts and how to have a truly mery christamas.


Khazan does an exceptional job in proving her thesis. She uses credible sorces such as Sigmund Freud, Joe Palca, and Dr.E. Torry Higgins in order to support her ideas. She also is very organized in exposing her main points. Subtitles are always an effective way to convey different subtopics in a large essay. She made good use of her language and used quotes in order to prove her points. Overall this is a very effective essay because it conveyed its message that was the reasons why there are family fights and used credible sources to back it up.


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