Remember when your parents had dinner parties? You would get dressed up, proudly serve appetizers and maybe even take a drink order or two if your dad was busy. Your mother spent days shopping for ingredients and cooking, baking and cleaning. Your dad stocked up at the liquor store. No expense was too grand, because GUESTS were coming!
There is a Polish saying, which says that when a guest in the house, God is in the house. In other words, treat this person as someone deserving of special treatment. Make him or her welcome in your home. My own parents continue to operate on this notion, as do their now grown children.
Increasingly, however, it seems that modern hosts are determined to exert the least effort possible in gathering people to their homes. "Party" used to mean that the person inviting you was going to provide food, drink and interesting company. Polite guests would generally bring along what was commonly referred to as the non-obligatory "host gift"- that is, a bottle of wine to augment the meal or perhaps a bouquet of flowers to brighten the room.
These days, invitations are issued via e-mail and usually, the party entails that the guests be responsible for their own food and/or drinks. Even in the most impoverished societies, people present a guest with the best they have, be it fresh milk from their one cow, freshly baked bread or even some homemade liquor they were saving for a special occasion. In these United States, financially comfortable people have no compunction about asking people to bring "whatever you want to drink," or even to provide all the courses ("potluck" is code for "bring your own everything." I've even been to parties where they don't have serving dishes!).
Is all this sheer laziness? Do these hosts think that people really prefer to buy and cook their own food and schlep it across town, when they could simply eat it in the comfort of their own homes? What's the alleged draw? So we can admire their new deck or suffer through their precocious 10-year-old's recitation of her tough school day? (Without little assignments to dole out hors d'oeuvres, the kids get bored really easily).
Miss Manners may still have all the answers but it seems as though people aren't listening. In this age of the iPod and online relationships, it seems that the concept of connection, in the form of politeness and protocol has all but vanished. The only parties deemed worthy of formal hospitality nowadays seem to be weddings and I'm sorry to say that this, too, probably has more to do with the laziness and greed that currently permeates our society. It says that the only time people are willing to host a gracious party is when there is the chance that the guests will pony up big presents. What happened to the collective enjoyment of good food, good wine and good company?
It's not too late to save what's left of American decorum. Throw a party soon and honor your guests by personalizing it and presenting them with all your best efforts. It doesn't have to be lavish. You don't have to present 10 courses. Just taking the time to care and connect with friends will mean so much to all of you in this plugged in, tuned out world.
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