That's what the holidays are for - for one person to tell the

Hearken, O lovers of laughter and lore, to the spirited words of Lara Flynn Boyle, who once said: “That’s what the holidays are for — for one person to tell the stories and another to dispute them. Isn’t that the Irish way?” Beneath the lightness of her jest lies a truth ancient and enduring — that storytelling, debate, and memory are the heart of family and of heritage. In these words is not only humor, but also a celebration of the Irish soul, where stories are both battleground and bridge, and where truth and imagination dance like fire and shadow in the hearth’s glow.

The Irish way, as Boyle calls it, is older than the written word. Long before ink marked parchment, the people of Ireland passed their wisdom through the tongue and the ear. The seanchaí, the traditional storyteller, was the guardian of memory — a weaver of tales that carried history, myth, and family lore across generations. Yet in Ireland, storytelling was never one-sided. Every tale invited challenge, every claim welcomed correction, and every family gathering became both a performance and a debate. For the Irish, a story is alive only when it is spoken, questioned, and reborn in conversation.

In this quote, Boyle reveals how family gatherings, especially during the holidays, mirror that ancient custom. Around the table, one voice begins: a father recalling the “great winter of ’78,” a grandmother describing a courtship that grew out of a storm, or a brother swearing he once saw the banshee by the riverbank. But no story in an Irish family stands unchallenged. Another voice rises — “That’s not how it happened!” — and the room erupts with laughter and protest. This is not discord, but ritual. It is the living rhythm of memory, where truth and exaggeration intertwine, and where love expresses itself through lively contradiction.

The philosopher John O’Donohue, himself an Irishman of deep poetic soul, once wrote that language is the “music of belonging.” The Irish have long known that to share words — to speak, to argue, to laugh — is to affirm connection. In Boyle’s lighthearted remark, there is hidden wisdom: that family love is not found in agreement, but in shared storytelling, in the communal act of remembering and disputing together. The holidays, then, become not merely a time of food and festivity, but of renewing the sacred thread that binds past to present, parent to child, laughter to legacy.

Consider, too, the historical resilience of this tradition. During centuries when Irish culture was suppressed — its language banned, its people scattered — storytelling kept the nation’s spirit alive. Around dim hearths and in distant exiles, the Irish told their tales to one another, embellishing them, reshaping them, ensuring that even under oppression, identity could not be silenced. Thus, when Boyle calls this practice “the Irish way,” she honors a lineage of resilience: the idea that stories are the soul’s inheritance, and that through them, even hardship can be transformed into humor and strength.

The paradox of this quote — one person telling and another disputing — reveals a deeper truth about the human heart. For all people, not only the Irish, memory is imperfect and truth is alive. Each person carries their version of the past, and only through dialogue do these fragments become whole. What Boyle describes with humor is, in essence, a philosophy of life: that the search for truth is not solemn or rigid, but joyous and communal. It is in the telling, the teasing, and the retelling that we come to understand one another — and ourselves.

The lesson to draw from Boyle’s words is this: cherish the stories of your people, and do not fear the arguments that accompany them. When families gather, let not silence reign but laughter and remembrance. Tell your tales boldly; let others correct them kindly. For in this dance of words, love is renewed and history made human. The stories may shift like smoke in the air, but the bond they create endures.

Thus, let it be remembered: “That’s what the holidays are for — for one person to tell the stories and another to dispute them.” For in that sacred and comic ritual — the laughter, the interruptions, the exaggerated claims and fond corrections — lives the Irish genius for life, the eternal belief that truth is best told through warmth, wit, and the living music of words shared among those who love one another.