How sports bring us together over the holidays

My older brother came home for the holidays. He’s been in the Navy for the last three years and is usually in a submarine somewhere under the world most of the time. One day he’ll resurface and call from Hawaii, before a long period of silence. Then a 3 a.m call from Japan.

Each year he’s allowed a few weeks of break to live as a regular, above-ground human being. Last year he came back while I was in London, and the year before that he spent that time in Nigeria, though, so I haven’t seen him much in a long time.

My brother is a Liverpool fan and I support Arsenal. We watched their game against each other over Christmas together. When Mohamed Salah scored in the second half, he jumped off the couch, ran around the house screaming about the goal, and came back to yell at me about how much better his team was than mine. He was still bragging when Granit Xhaka scored and was still stunned by the Xhaka goal when Mesut Ozil put Arsenal ahead 3-2 after being down 0-2. I laughed at him so hard for the rest of the day.

Of course, Arsenal had to be Arsenal and conceded soon after. The game ended in a tie and we were both left disappointed and unamused.

Before that game, my brother and I had spent most of the break in our respective spaces. He slept a lot in his room and I read alone in mine. There was no awkwardness or bitterness; we still came together many times to joke, laugh, eat, and play video games. It was simply that we had been three years apart, and before that, we didn’t see each other much because of work. Before work was school. A lot of time had gone by, and we were both different people.

I don’t believe sports are a true unifier of people. I don’t think anything really is. Sports can become part of someone’s identity; something which many other people, of different backgrounds, can relate to. But whatever magic exists in that connection can easily be overridden by other problems of identity. Racism, sexism, homophobia, bullying, and general conflict exist in the sporting world as they exist outside of it.

What I think sports are really good at is in being a consistent and common language that different people can enter and interact through. Asking someone at a bar about the game they’re watching is an easy way to make a friend for the moment. In sports exists the same hopes and disappointments year after year. Arsenal are always Arsenal, and Liverpool are always Liverpool. The same conversations exist with different characters and can be accessed by almost anyone. It’s what makes games perfect for the holiday season, when everyone comes home a little older and different than the previous time.

A tragedy of life, at least to me, is circumstances inevitably take you away from people you grew up with — to the point that by the mid-20s, you’re only seeing family members and loved ones a handful of times in the year. The older you grow, the more time between meetings and the less you see them overall.

The holidays, with everyone getting the same time off and even with their over-commercialization, try to alleviate that sadness of distance. Of growing up. They’re a time for families, of every kind, to reunite. For people to come back together. For some of us, they’re a time to be a child again. To live in that timeless world without the stresses and anxieties of work and adult problems; a time when you can stay up to ungodly hours and when days bleed into each other.

When people are distant from us for a long time, we can see them only as memories. We remember them as what they used to be the last time we saw them. When we’re close, we barely notice how people change and grow. Things seem to always remain the same. But if we see them after some time, each wrinkle, gray hair, and personality change stands out.

Sometimes the time between encounters is so much and the changes so deep that it’s difficult to approach. Watching a game together, entering a familiar sphere, is an easy and wonderful way to bridge that distance. It’s to find that relatable identity, even if the two people support different teams (fandoms are all alike), where you can speak the same language. It’s a relatively stable space in an ever-changing world. I can never understand fully the experiences of my brother in the Navy, and he must feel the same way with me and my life since he’s been away. But I know him as a Liverpool fan, and we can argue about the game, players, referee, and who deserved to win all day long.

Over the break we watched many soccer, basketball, and NFL games. We talked as if the years hadn’t gone by. Like we were children again. Like the days were never going to end. The games restored a bit of what the best part of life is: being connected to and enjoying the company of those around you.

Then it came to an end. The holidays were over. I dropped him off at the airport and slowly went back to my own individual life. The distance of adult life began to be restored. I won’t see him for another year at the least, and then he’ll be different in new ways that I can’t imagine.

Thankfully the magic of watching a game will be there waiting for us. They won’t close the distance that the time will create, but sports doesn’t need to do so. That sports can be a stable language to communicate with another person in an ever-changing world is enough.