Partition, armchair epidemiology and Joe Duffy: 2021’s top conversation killers

Well done. You’ve almost made it to The Day Itself. As we prepare to close the door on another insufferable dose of a year, it can be helpful to draw on the wisdom of those who survived similarly difficult periods in history.

Personally, I like to turn to the comforting words of Julian of Norwich, who lived through the Black Death, the peasants’ revolt, the suppression of the Lollards and ended up on her deathbed with a serious illness at 30. “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well,” was her philosophical, though not entirely solutions-based, take on it all.

Granted, Julian didn't have to suffer Christmas dinner with your cousin's wife, the anti-vaxxer homeopath who wouldn't inject anything into her body except the bargain dermal fillers she buys on Ali Baba.

In the spirit of helping you to follow all the necessary public health measures and precautions to ensure there are no super-spreading outbreaks (we make no apology – Covid puns are obligatory) of simmering resentment in your bubble/cohort/household gathering, or however you’ve taken to affectionately referring to your family, here’s our annual guide to surviving some of the thornier topics of the year. We bring you 2021’s top Christmas dinner conversation killers.

A murder-for-hire scheme and a lawyer who tried to fake his own death

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Martin Rafferty obituary: Businessman who played role in Ireland’s economic success

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Rosita Boland: I just couldn’t order a sandwich called the Italian Stallion

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Stirring it up with the relatives might be as much entertainment as you get to have for quite some time if Dr Tony and his team have anything to do with it, so consider this a useful prompt, and wade right in.

Saving Dublin pubs
The opener: "It was beautiful to see the people coming together to oppose an over-scaled, crude monument to the destruction of Dublin's soul. It's an absolute travesty that developer greed always wins out. This wasn't just about saving a pub, it was a lost opportunity to make a statement about what the city stands for, who it belongs to and what we value. It was about culture, heritage, history . . ."

The comeback: "Wait Dad, I thought the Cobblestone HAD been saved?"

The clarification: "Eh no, Síofra. I'm talking about an actual cultural icon. Where were you and your woke pals in the Dublin Is Dying crew when they signed the death notice on Kiely's of Donnybrook? Just because it wasn't the preferred watering hole of crusty musicians and bleeding heart millennials doesn't mean it doesn't have an important place in the cultural landscape. There's no shared island future without South County Dublin, you know."

Fight factor: 3/10 This isn't just about which pubs are worth saving. It's about social class, intergenerational warfare, sport, culture. Potentially thorny.

Armchair epidemiology
The opener: "My old, deaf, half-blind dog could do a better job at the epidemiological modelling than that shower. You know they're massaging the daily numbers by letting a big backlog of positive cases build up, so they can release them just as they're hitting us with new restrictions? And they've set the PCR testing cycle to 45, which means that they're making sure to include cases that aren't even infectious. We're being played like Frankie Gavin's fiddle."

The comeback: "I personally sleep better knowing you and your Twitter epidemiological modeller pals are trawling social media night and day to find something the experts have missed, Rory. I'm sure, given your background in, eh, bookkeeping and payroll, they'll be very grateful for your insights on optimum threshold values in PCR assays. Any chance you might take a few days off for Christmas? Oh wait, don't tell me: the virus doesn't take holidays, so you can't either."

Fight factor: 8.5/10 It's been a long and tetchy year. If there's one in your family – and let's face it, there's one in every family, so if you think there isn't, it's probably you – we recommend banning all discussions of the C-word. And the O-word. Plus anything starting with V – variant, vaccine, virus.

Sally Rooney's Israel boycott
The opener: "More empty, virtue-signalling posturing from a wildly over-rated writer. Let me get this straight – Sally Rooney is boycotting Israel over human rights abuses, but Normal People was published in China by a publishing house with close links to the tyrannical communist regime. And I believe you can read her books in Iran. Although why anyone would want to read them in Iran or anywhere else is beyond me. Israel has had a lucky escape."

The comeback: "Still not stretching your reading material beyond the headlines I see, Séan. She didn't 'boycott Israel'. She said it would be an honour to have her book – which is a brilliant, bold, sharp and knowing read – translated into Hebrew by a company which publicly distances itself from apartheid. Your logic, as far as I understand it, is that if she can't solve all of the world's human rights abuses at once, she shouldn't attempt to make a stand on any of them."

Fight factor: 5/10 Depending on who's joining you, brace yourself for a conversation that falls somewhere on the spectrum between an interesting exchange about the merits of boycotts to all-out Middle Eastern conflict of the kind that even Jared Kushner would shy away from mediating.

Michael D Higgins and commemorating partition
The opener: "If you really want to get into empty virtue-signalling posturing, Séan, President Michael D Higgins refusing to attend an ecumenical service to mark a centenary of partition and the formation of Northern Ireland is a far better example. It was very disappointing from someone who has talked so much about the need to unshackle ourselves from the past and make space for other views. You only had to look at the ugly outbreaks of sectarian glee on social media to see how much harm it did."

The comeback: "There's no way the President of Ireland could attend a ceremony commemorating partition. Anyone who thinks he should is shockingly naive, a west Brit apologist, or just having a laugh. When the DUP and UUP start to condemn the Tricolour being burned on the 12th, then I'll worry about making space for their feelings. Hashtag my president."

Fight factor: 9/10 Let recent poll results be a warning to you: we're all for peace, reconciliation and a shared future in theory, not quite so much in practice. Still, this could be a good opportunity to stage a scaled-down Citizens' Assembly over the turkey.

Team Kendall
The opener: "That viral New Yorker profile on Jeremy Strong [the actor who plays Kendall Roy, the perpetually-consternated prodigal son of the Roy family in Succession] was a howl. The guy comes across like a right clown. Apparently, he doesn't think the show or the character is funny. He actually said about Kendall: 'I take him as seriously as I take my own life', the insufferable eejit."

The comeback: "I'm old enough to remember a time when taking yourself seriously wasn't something to be sneered at. I know it's very fashionable now to be all glib and cynical and offhand about everything, but what's wrong with caring about your work? He's a brilliant actor. So what if he's a little bit, well, weird and intense? The world might be a better place if we were all more weird and intense."

Fight factor: 2/10 If they could harness the speed with which outraged celebrities rushed to Strong's defence after the profile appeared, they could probably power the world's data centres for a decade. But it's unlikely anyone in your circle harbours such intense feelings.

Brit bashing
The opener: "Can you stop sending those anti-British Simpsons memes to the family WhatsApp, Derek? They're not funny. We're no better than Boris or the worst of the Brexiteers if we can't rise above those kind of bitter identity politics. It was exactly the same petty tribalism and misty-eyed nostalgia for the past that led to Brexit and, by the way, who do you think will be the ones paying the price for that now?"

The comeback: "Oh would you ever lighten up, uncle Brendan? The one bright spot in this year, which brought as much joy and comfort as a chronic case of piles, has been the opportunity to watch the Brits self-destruct. I know it's not PC to say it, but after 800 years of oppression and them making Aisling Bea change her accent, we're entitled to our bit of craic now."

Fight factor: 7/10. Deep down, you know uncle Brendan is right. It's unseemly, unhelpful and xenophobic, but you're not giving up the memes without a fight.

Giving Out
The opener: "Do you know the worst thing about this pandemic? It's the amount of giving out it has unleashed. The parents giving out about the school closures. The teachers giving out about parents treating them as babysitters. The boosted giving out about the unboosted, the vaccinated giving out about the unvaccinated. The cocooners giving out about the youngsters. The young people giving out about the pub closing times. The doctors giving out about people giving out about not being able to go for their pizza and pints. Everyone giving out about Nphet. Dr Tony giving out about everyone. And everyone on social media is outraged about everything all the time. I'm absolutely sick to the back teeth of it."

The comeback: "Ah would you stop giving out? Actually, don't. Give in to it. Giving out is the most Irish thing there is; it's so much a part of us, there isn't even a non-Hiberno translation for it. Moaning, complaining, telling off, cribbing, whinging, bitching – none of them encapsulate the untrammelled joy of a good, heated give out. It is the most democratic and inclusive thing we do – we even have an entire radio programme dedicated to it. Forget St Brigid, it's Joe Duffy who should have a bank holiday dedicated to him so we can all have a day off and spend it getting uselessly apoplectic about inconsequential things. If it wasn't for the epic doses of giving out, I don't think any of us would have got through this year."

Fight factor: 10/10, or you're not doing it right.