Ah, white Christmas - a time for joy, laughter, and the inevitable barrage of questions from family members as you try to get the food in your mouth. How to reply properly, without boring or overwhelming those who crave answers? If you're worried about surviving a family dinner with endless questions and feel the pressure of being in the spotlight, you've come to the right place. Here's a quick guide on how to survive a holiday feast (based on my experience).

Facing the unavoidable
Be prepared. Relatives are often proud, curious, and perplexed to have a scientist in the family. And they won't waste an opportunity like this to bombard you with question after question. After the classical "Have you got a partner yet?", science starts.

So what exactly do you do?
The easiest answer is to give the title of your thesis or your research line. Don't do that. No one is going to understand that technical jargon. Instead, try to explain it in simple terms, like "I study how stars explode and create the elements that make up everything, including you, me, and Aunt Angela's turkey". At this point, if the others have yet to get up and leave, the conversation will flow on its own by answering their questions, as they want to know more about your field. Remember to keep it simple but engaging, grandma and little cousin also want to learn.

Cool, but do aliens exist?
It may be a joke question, but I like to flip it around and start a discussion. It's a great chance to explain how big the universe is and to think about the probability of not being alone in the cosmos. Isn't it great to turn a joke into a philosophical reflection that leaves everyone's jaws dropping?

Can you fix my phone?
No. But have you tried turning it off and on again?

Controversial questions
At some point, polemic questions may arise. Whether it is about global warming, nuclear power, or other hot-button topics, expect lively debates. These discussions can be tricky, especially when you’re surrounded by relatives with strong opinions. But don’t panic! This is your chance to steer the conversation in a productive direction. This is how I deal with this:

Stay calm and respectful
I know it's as easy to say as to get caught up in the heat of the moment. Responding calmly will reduce the chances of the dinner ending with a pile of broken dishes and barricade-like tables. Remember, the goal is not to “win” the argument but to share knowledge so that others can form their own opinion.

Be prepared for misinformation
Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon to encounter relatives who believe in conspiracy theories. In my case, it’s the “there’s no such thing as climate change” brother-in-law. Then, you can refer to the overall scientific agreement and explain how it is measured, citing data or events to which it can be related, such as extreme weather patterns.

Know when to give up
Sometimes people do not listen to any arguments other than their own and the debate may get too heated. If you feel that the conversation is starting to get into a loop, it’s perfectly fine to step away or change the subject. Don’t be afraid to say “I don't think we'll ever be able to agree”. Guess we'll talk about football now.

Embrace the science lover
There's always that one cousin or niece who is genuinely interested in scientific news. If you don't like being in the limelight, retreat to a corner and enjoy solo conversations and discussions with them. Share your knowledge and passion and, who knows, you may end up inspiring a future scientist!

The Escape Plan
If you feel overwhelmed or have been talking about work too much, it may be time to slip away. You can start with a quick trip to the restroom and stop in the kitchen on your way back. I like to help with food or refill dishes and drinks to disconnect and make some time. If you are fed up with science, bring some gossip back to the table. They love it!

Conclusion
Sometimes, questions don’t make sense or don’t relate at all to what we do. Don’t be afraid to say “I don’t know”. At the end of the day, we are human. Ordinary people. We are much more than our job and, while I’m very proud of what I’ve achieved professionally, I don’t want to be defined by just that. I have a lot more to offer in other aspects!

After all, surviving a holiday dinner is all about balancing the scientific with the social, the complex with the simple. If you think about it, it is the same kind of balance we carry out in our daily lives as researchers, so we have been training for this for years!

My final thought is that, in some way, family is just like our universe: varied, full of stars, each one shining in its own way. Even when we find ourselves surrounded by darkness, they are all a source of light and warmth during these cold holidays. Merry Christmas and happy holidays!

Scientists come from all backgrounds. Scientists are diverse, and much effort has been made in recent years to dispel the myth that science is done exclusively by old white men in old white lab coats. I believe there may be one stereotype with a grain of truth, however:

Every scientist, deep down, is a nerd.

How do we know this? Well, take the SLURM Workload manager for example - anyone involved in high performance computing will be familiar with this. You're probably also aware that it's a direct reference to the Slurm soda from Futurama [1] - one of the finest comedies ever written. The scientific literature, in all disciplines, is littered with references to comic books, the Lord of the Rings, the X-Files and more [2]. We're nerds, and we want people to know it.

I think that is to be celebrated. There's a certain mindset that you have to have to do science. Precision and focus to ensure that the results you show and the experiments you do are robust. Attention to detail. A considered approach to problem solving. I suspect that's the same reason that so many of my friends and colleagues in astronomy, and STEM more generally, enjoy board games, pub quizzes, and role-playing games.

And Magic. ​

Physicists love Magic. 

Some physicists love Magic so much they reference it in their plenary talk titles [3]. My head of department once said to me that Magic: the Gathering is a game for lawyers - with rules so complex they fill a 300 page document. But I think a game like that is not just for lawyers, it's for us nerds too, and it's a great way to get to know people and to throw off the stresses of a researcher's life, for an evening at least.

'I had Zenegos out, stole a scute swarm and made 3 land drops'
'Oh nice, so obviously you stomped them?'
'No, one of the other guys had a Phyrexian Rebirth and populated the token. We all got murdered by 39/39 horrors.’

This is a mildly paraphrased conversation I recently had with my head of department, where he told me of the ups and downs of our university's board games evening. He and I, along with a few other colleagues, have a nearly-weekly Commander night - nearly because the stresses and strains of academic life do mean we miss around as many as we hold. But for a few hours a week (most weeks), we have the opportunity to relax, discuss work if we want to, and mostly just have a fun time with a pile of expensive cardboard. It turns out that the kind of exacting mind that enjoys designing code, analysing data and synthesising literature also enjoys playing one of the few games in the world that can claim to be Turing complete [4] - you can build a computer with a Magic deck, although it may take some time to run a simulation on it. 

While I personally feel some measure of an ethical quandary consuming product from Wizards of the Coast presently - with swingeing layoffs [5] and $1000 proxies [6] - it is undeniable that the game is incredible. I have introduced it to colleagues, all of whom have loved it. I have played it with astrophysicists from across Europe. It is almost universal in its appeal - and it is because we are all nerds. We enjoy creative endeavours, - science is a creative process - and designing a deck from the ground up can be as creative and personal as any other hobby. We also enjoy taking the time to get to know each other, to discuss our problems at work or with our research and to solve puzzles together - be that in a game of Magic or any other boardgame. It is the intersection of intellectual stimulation, and mindless fun, that I think appeals so much to the nerd in me.

Team building is a vital part of academic life. We spend so much time with our colleagues, and long hours are the norm for many of us. As a community, we probably need to address that at some point - burnout is a real concern for many. But while the long hours stay, and hopefully after they are gone, we need ways to socialise and communicate with the people who we spend a large part of our lives with. Magic is just one of many ways to do this - and it's an incredibly fun way that appeals to a scientific mind. If you haven't yet, ask around your department and see if there are board game nights, or a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, and if there aren't why not propose one? We're all nerds; let's embrace it.


References
[1] Jette, M.; Grondona, M. (June 2003). "SLURM: Simple Linux Utility for Resource Management" (PDF). Proceedings of ClusterWorld Conference and Expo. San Jose, California.
[2] Chandrasekaran, Arun Richard. "Pop-culture references in peer-reviewed scientific articles." Matter 4.3 (2021): 759-760.
[3] https://indico.ihep.ac.cn/event/11934/contributions/14661/ 
[4] Yin, Howe Choong, and Alex Churchill. "A Programming Language Embedded in Magic: The Gathering." 12th International Conference on Fun with Algorithms (FUN 2024). Schloss Dagstuhl–Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik, 2024.
[5] "Hasbro's 1,100 layoffs have hit D&D and Magic: The Gathering hard, as a growing list of staff announce their departures"
[6] "Magic’s $1000 30th Anniversary set evoked nostalgia, but for whom?"