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OPINION: Are Dinner Parties Becoming A Dying Art?

A good question. And one that interests me, particularly. Given my membership in the generation that’s been accused of ‘killing the cocktail party’, I was intensely curious to see whether I and my cohort were also being accused of killing the ‘dinner party’…

Dinner Party - © 2024 Monkeybusiness via depositphotosYounger generations are re-imagining the dinner party as a more casual, less-stressful affair.

We boomers have been taking an undeserved ‘licking’ for several decades, now. Since the younger generations began to mature, and decided to blame all of society’s abiding ills on us…

Regrettable decisions…

I’m not saying we Boomers haven’t made some regrettable decisions regarding what to keep and what to toss, culturally, during our reign as society’s ‘leaders’. But I must take exception to the claim that we killed the cocktail party. The sad truth is, it died a natural death – as the Great Boomer Dream ran out of steam.

The Dream was that if you went to college and got a degree, the world would be your oyster – shuck-ed, elegantly dressed, and ready to swallow whole. Don’t worry about saving for retirement or living within your means. Just pull out your credit card. And there was always something to celebrate…

Downhill from there

The hard-drinking world of Mad Men was real. I was very young, but I can remember it as a hard-etched, historical era. Then, it all fell apart when the legions of post-war philosophy majors woke up one morn-ing unemployed, and unqualified to ‘do’ anything. And inflation became something im-pactful enough that everybody started to worry about it.

Alcohol inevitably fell from fashion. By the 1990s, the concept of the dedicated driver was deeply entrenched in our collective sense of right and wrong. Not long thereafter, drinking too much in public became severely frowned upon, even if you weren’t driving. I’m not saying that was wrong. It just sucked all the life out of the cocktail party concept.

Dinner parties fell prey

By the late 1990s, the classic dinner party had begun to fall prey to the work-a-holic lifestyle of the over-extended, underpaid middle-class white-collar worker. Many adults found themselves in two-income ‘families’, up to their ears in debt, maybe working two jobs. They just didn’t have the time or the means to attend – much less mount – the endless round of dinner and house parties that had characterized the social lives of their parents.

That, laments CNN’s , is how the ‘art’ of the dinner party was lost. And her generation has had to start all over again, reinventing and re-imagining the concept.

“Until a few months ago, the thought of hosting a dinner party filled me with dread,” she wrote in a recent Op-Ed piece. “I was convinced that to invite people to dine in my home, the space needed to be sparkling clean. The meal needed to look as good as it tasted. The experience needed to be worth their while.”

Cue the anxiety spiral: “Can my tiny living room accommodate all those guests? Will they be put off by my heavy-handed use of spices? Will anyone actually find this fun? Whatever the reason, the standard I was measuring myself against was perfection.”

Blame Martha Stewart

“It wasn’t just me. At least in my experience, people my age just didn’t throw dinner parties,”Kaur continues. “When I shared this observation with friends and experts, they mostly agreed: Hosting seems like a lot of work and pressure.

“Blame the themed gatherings with printed menus, elaborate tablescapes and decorative ice cubes that I see all over Instagram and TikTok. Or the rise of foodie culture, accelerated by Bon Appétit’s once-beloved YouTube channel that encouraged my generation to strive for epicurean flare at home.

“You could even trace it back to Martha Stewart, whose homemaking empire in the ‘80s and ‘90s ushered in an ethos of unapologetic extravagance and effort.

“It was simpler just to opt out.”

‘Letting go’ the key

But Kaur insists her genration’s secret to enjoying the dinner party concept again is the central tenet of the ‘mindfulness’ movement. Just ‘ let go’.

US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy agrees. In fact, he’s championed the Dinner Party as an ‘approved’ way to fight loneliness, which he officially identified as a public health epidemic last year

Project Gather is an officially-approved effort to encourage folks to ‘gather’, and to do so in the most ancient and fundamental of ways: around food.

There’s a booklet for that…

According to the official Project website: “Project Gather is inspired by Recipes for Connection, a booklet published by U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy that offers a wide range of easy ideas and tips for gatherings over food. No matter your style of get-together – small to large, brief to long, intergenerational, accessible – this booklet is designed to help all of us build the confidence to connect.”

The booklet offers common-sense suggestions for making the concept of hosting a dinner party less scary. For instance, making your event a pot luck can help control costs. Co-hosting with a friend or relative can make the preparation less daunting. Make sure everyone involved knows it’s intended to be a casual, rather than ‘dress-up’ affair…

My take

I fully endorse Kaur and Murthy’s recommendations for the ‘new’ dinner party concept. The last such get-together I attended was just what the doctor (and the journalist) ordered. And it was one of the most enjoyable dinner parties I’ve ever experienced.

Notice to Friends and Family: I will be glad to help organize one of these ‘new-age’ dinner parties anytime. I will contribute at least one dish to the Pot Luck menu. I will share my culinary, hosting and any other relevant experience or expertise you may request. But I CANNOT commit to hold the event at my tiny little, pet-infested, parking-challenged home.

Once upon a time, I was a hospitality Superwoman. Now, I am just super-tired most of the time…

~ Maggie-J.