Dear Etiquetteer:
Today I was getting my hair cut and my stylist asked me if we host dinner guests a lot. “Yes,” I said. He replied, “Don’t get my wife started! She’s always asking why we’re the ones always hosting.”
I said to my stylist, “I think that’s why we like our social club so much. We get tired of people whose phones don’t make outgoing calls. You could have six months of kitchen renovations and they still wouldn’t invite you over.”
Whatever happened to reciprocating invitations?
Dear Reciprocating:
Spin the Wheel of Seven Deadly Sins and it would probably stop on the line between Sloth and Gluttony* — but more on Sloth. Many people, unfortunately, look at hosting a dinner party in their homes as a lot of hard work. (And it has gotten harder in the last 60 years, since much of the middle class can no longer afford to hire help and it takes two breadwinners to make ends meet.) So they are overwhelmed by the thought of making the effort, perhaps less confident in their cooking skills, or not living in a home large enough to entertain at that scale.
They may also just not be aware that there is (Used to be? Is.) a rule about reciprocal hospitality. Miss Manners, the redoubtable Judith Martin, said it best in her Guide for the Turn-of-the-Millennium (1990): “In polite society, people are supposed to socialize for the sake of being with other people, rather than with oak dining tables . . . Youth and poverty are therefore no excuse for failing to reciprocate.”**
Your reference to a “social club” reminded Etiquetteer of the Guaranteed Reciprocity of a supper club. Dear Mother and Dear Father (may they rest in peace) and their circle cycled through everyone’s dining rooms monthly during the school year. The hostess would plan the menu***, assign recipes, provide the meat course, welcome everyone with a smile into a spotlessly clean home****, and of course clean up afterward. The other ladies brought their assignments ready to serve (no assembly on site, reheating as needed), may have helped clear the table, and took home their casserole dishes. But a supper club is more of a group effort than True Reciprocity — and people are so difficult to schedule in this century!
But to keep our own Wheel of Seven Deadly Sins from landing on Wrath, we need to let go, for ourselves, the need or expectation or desire for Reciprocal Invitations. Etiquetteer thinks of your stylist’s wife, not feeling appreciated and ready to enjoy someone else’s labors. It’s not unreasonable to want that. But if resentment begins to flavor her heart, then it is better not to entertain those particular guests any more. But for those who enjoy entertaining at home (as we do), keep right on doing it — but do it for your own pleasure first. And when it stops feeling fun, stop.
Etiquetteer has a few simple suggestions to make a dinner party simpler to manage:
Don’t entertain more people than you can serve comfortably. Etiquetteer can just barely manage eight, but four or six works more smoothly.
Make one (or more) courses the night before. Some recipes are better the second day anyway.
You don’t have to cook everything you serve yourself. Order a cake or rolls or something from your local bakery. Stuffed grape leaves from the local deli make a fabulous first course.
Simplicity is key. Long lists of ingredients and elaborate methods aren’t the keys to a successful dinner. Heaven knows sorbet and berries is one of the best desserts.
Etiquetteer wishes you (and your stylist and his wife) smooth and memorable evenings dining at home with friends, and equally smooth and memorable evening dining with friends at their homes.
*As a reminder, the Seven Deadly Sins are Pride, Greed, Wrath, Envy, Lust, Gluttony, and Sloth. Etiquetteer always thought Vanity was one of the Seven Deadlies, but that must have been included under Pride.
**Page 407, quoted without permission. Please don’t hurt me.
***Somewhere Etiquetteer has a small sheaf of Dear Mother’s planning grids for these supper club dinners. I really must dig those out to share; quite an artifact of middle class entertaining from another era.
****Young Etiquetteer would be sent to bed early when supper club was at home, and remembers peeking out the bedroom door into the dining room, sometimes shyly exchanging a glance with a lady at the near end of the table.