Maybe I should have said superstitious rather than religious, but eeh

Also it does fall into a last Taboo area, admitting you don't like The American Dinner Party is pretty much saying I AM NOT MIDDLE CLASS in big loud letters. Soooooo much angsty class-rage is channeled into Putting Food Into The Mouths Of People That Do Not Live In Your House that it is very strange, to me.

Sounds like one of the strange rituals of the Nacirema.

My Morning Mouth Ritual is the best

I love dinner parties, and I also love your analysis. "Soooooo much angsty class-rage is channeled into Putting Food Into The Mouths Of People That Do Not Live In Your House," indeed.

Oh, but a dinner party is just a dinner party, occhiblu. A Dinner Party is a "Dinner Party". I've been to dozens of dinner parties, but only one ever Dinner Party, and it was every bit the social disaster for the hostess as I expected. At least the cigars were expensive and the scotch was old.

Yeah, I'm with Ardiril. I have/go to two or three dinner parties a month. I'm hosting one this weekend; the theme is boozy fruit. Every course must incorporate both booze and fruit.

Originally it was "boozy fruit on FIRE" but someone pointed out that that would be a bad idea by the time we got to dessert.

But as for Dinner Parties...well, those seem like less fun. I bet they don't have themes.

I don't have anything against dinner parties, though we tend to refer to them as "having XYZ over for dinner." They are a great way to get your friends to your house for some good food and entertainment without having to throw an expensive, exhausting 40-person blowout.

Yeah, magazines take them to the extreme, but few people really do everything prescribed in magazines. Magazines take wardrobe, makeup, body image, and consumerism in general to the extreme. That doesn't mean anybody pays attention to that stuff.

I'm pretty sure that I haven't ever been to a Dinner Party.

For that matter, I don't think that we've been to a dinner party in a few years. If we have dinner with friends, it's almost always at a restaurant and we don't have people over since we don't really know how to cook.

THE DINNER PARTY

The highest type of human society in the existing social order is found in the parlor. In the elegant and refined reunions of the aristocratic classes there is none of the impertinent interference of legislation. The Individuality of each is fully admitted. Intercourse, therefore, is perfectly free. Conversation is continuous, brilliant, and varied. Groups are formed according to attraction. They are continuously broken up, and re-formed through the operation of the same subtile and all-pervading influence. Mutual deference pervades all classes, and the most perfect harmony, ever yet attained, in complex human relations, prevails under precisely those circumstances which Legislators and Statesmen dread as the conditions of inevitable anarchy and confusion. If there are laws of etiquette at all, they are mere suggestions of principles admitted into and judged of for himself or herself, by each individual mind.
Is it conceivable that in all the future progress of humanity, with all the innumerable elements of development which the present age is unfolding, society generally, and in all its relations, will not attain as high a grade of perfection as certain portions of society, in certain special relations, have already attained?

Suppose the intercourse of the parlor to be regulated by specific legislation. Let the time which each gentleman shall be allowed to speak to each lady be fixed by law; the position in which they should sit or stand be precisely regulated; the subjects which they shall be allowed to speak of, and the tone of voice and accompanying gestures with which each may be treated, carefully defined, all under pretext of preventing disorder and encroachment upon each other's privileges and rights, then can any thing be conceived better calculated or more certain to convert social intercourse into intolerable slavery and hopeless confusion?

--S. Pearl Andrews The Science of Society

I can't remember the last dinner party I attended. Maybe, 20 years ago? And, if I recall, the couple was throwing one because they had never been to one, either, and just wanted to try it.

There is a part of me deeply annoyed at the existence of an ext ire drawer of things that are used maybe, MAYBE once a year.

Er, entire.

What is up with you virtual keyboard....

I've never been to or put on either type of dinner party. I think I'm relieved.

I attend a weekly Din-Din Party with the other dogs in the yard. All dressed up, the same old kibble tastes like the finest table scraps. We play poker, too.

Oh, but a dinner party is just a dinner party, occhiblu. A Dinner Party is a "Dinner Party". I've been to dozens of dinner parties, but only one ever Dinner Party, and it was every bit the social disaster for the hostess as I expected.

I'd argue that you can apply that logic to almost any social gathering. I've been to a bunch of small-w weddings (and thrown one, too), but only to a handful of Capital-W Weddings with the fuss and the frills and the roast beef and passed hors d'oeuvres.

I used to throw Dinner Parties, but if something went wrong, I'd roll with it. I learned the valuable lesson from my mother (who threw Dinner Parties throughout my childhood and no doubt before, complete with long skirts and wedding china) that the chief priority for a party is making your guests comfortable. If the main course catches fire, if your new kitchen floor is ruined*, if you spill butter all over your favorite dress --- whatever. You make your guests feel welcome and relaxed.

I guess what I throw every few weeks is a no-caps dinner party --- heck, I don't even serve it at the dinner table, usually, since we use it as a work station. But the main goal is to make our guests feel welcome and relaxed, not to show off or to use all our STUFF. (Though I enjoy using the stuff, I admit.)

*Some day I really must write down the tale of the Flying Chicken dinner party. Mom kept her cool, all right.

My parents had dinner parties of some sort at which a great deal of fun was clearly had. However, the amount of drama involved in preparing for these events was really awful. The house always looked gorgeous for Christmas, but getting it there was like a mini Bataan death march. (no disrespect for actual Bataan prisoners intended.) I like the pretty dishes and candlelight, and good food and wine, but if my friends haven't figured out before now that my house is dusty, and there's clutter, not to mention the boxes of stuff that still haven't been unpacked, then they must be politely ignoring it, which is why they're friends.

We should have a distributed dinner party via G+ some time.