Our family "annual meeting": twenty years, every New Year's Eve afternoon

We have one family tradition nothing is allowed to interrupt. Every New Year's Eve at three in the afternoon, the whole family sits down together for our "family annual meeting."

It has been running for twenty years. My father started it. In 2004, the year his business hit trouble, he said at the New Year's Eve table, "Things aren't good at home this year," and my mother burst into tears on the spot. The most important dinner of the year was eaten under a cloud. My father thought about it afterward and decided that family business could not be carried on the strength of reporting only the good and hiding the bad. So from the following year he announced it: every New Year's Eve afternoon, the family would hold a meeting and lay the year's accounts on the table.

Twenty years have refined the agenda into four items.

One, the review. Each person in turn names "the three most important things that happened at home this year." You are not allowed to name only good ones.

Two, the accounts. My father gives the large accounts: income, major events, plans for the coming year. My mother gives the small ones: the old people's health, how the children are doing.

Three, decisions. Anything the family needs to settle gets voted on the spot. My grandfather's care arrangements. Renovating the old house. Which household helps which child with school.

Four, the outlook. Everyone names one small goal for the family for next year.

In twenty years this meeting has pulled us out of three crises.

The first was my second uncle, whose business collapsed and left him in debt. At the meeting he intended to report only good news. My father cut him off. "No polite talk at the annual meeting." Once he'd told the truth, the family assembled a rescue plan on the spot: three households would lend money interest-free, to be repaid within two years, and the children were not to be told the details. They found out later anyway, and volunteered that it didn't need repaying. That crisis turned the meeting into a board meeting.

The second was my grandmother's care. She flatly refused a nursing home, but all four of her children lived in other cities. The meeting voted: hire a live-in aide, split four ways, each household visits once a month, and the rota was drawn up before we left the table. At first she grumbled that it was a waste of money. Later she bragged to anyone who'd listen: "My care was decided by a family meeting. More proper than anything."

The third was my own marriage. That year I meant to keep the separation quiet. My father saw through me. He didn't make me say it in front of everyone. After the meeting he kept me back alone, listened, and said, "We've been running this meeting for you for over ten years for exactly this kind of hour. In this family there are no outsiders where you're concerned."

A family's ability to absorb a shock has nothing to do with how much money it has saved. It depends on whether there is an occasion where the truth can be laid out. The annual meeting is that occasion.

These days the fourth item is the liveliest part. It has evolved from empty phrases like "make more money next year" into a family list of small goals. My grandfather's: learn to use a smartphone. Mine: take everyone for a checkup. My sister's: pass the civil service exam. My father's: quit drinking. Whatever was set at last year's meeting gets inspected at this year's. Anyone who didn't finish has to explain why. The penalties are jokes, of course. For the goal my sister missed, she has to cook one dish for next year's New Year's Eve dinner.

Last year was the twentieth meeting. My father did something that made my eyes sting. He set twenty years of minutes on the table — twenty notebooks, the handwriting moving from his fountain pen to my ballpoint to my sister's printouts. "This is our family history," he said. "As of today, it's yours."