When you are a guest in somebody else’s house you are on their territory. They may have invited you to share their space, but it is primarily theirs and you must respect that. No matter what travesties of taste, awkward room layouts, chaotic clutter or poor housekeeping you encounter, you must resolutely keep your thoughts to yourself. Hosts will, of course, insist that you make yourself at home, but this is a customary polite gesture and shouldn’t be taken literally. There are a myriad of ways in which you can cross the invisible boundary into unacceptable behaviour, turning yourself from welcome visitor into nightmare guest.
Most of us will know these things instinctively, but it is worth mentioning a few of the worst offences:
• As a guest you have no right to rearrange, alter or ‘improve’ any aspect of the host’s home. If you have been given a guest bedroom, it will temporarily become your own territory, so it is acceptable to reposition a chair or move excess pillows to a sofa, but only if you remember to put everything back precisely as you found it.
• Leave your room looking reasonably tidy in the morning – a host might be discouraged or downcast if they happen to see their carefully prepared guest room in a state of chaos and dereliction.
• When it comes to leaving, ask the host about the bedding. Some hosts will appreciate you stripping the sheets and duvet cover, but that is not inevitably the case. If you are leaving the bedding intact, make sure that the bed looks neat and tidy.
• In communal areas of the house – for example the living room, you must not alter anything – that means steering clear of moving around the furniture, rearranging cushions, moving side tables or using your laptop to create a desk area in a communal room.
• Bathrooms are a particularly dangerous area: you should never change the position of the loo roll in the holder (end of the roll hanging on the exterior or the interior – the jury’s still out on this vital question, and there is no ‘right’ way to arrange it). Don’t clutter up bathroom shelves with all your own toiletries – it’s better to keep them in a washbag, which you can either leave discreetly in the bathroom, or carry back and forth.
• Clean up after yourself. If you have a bath or shave in a shared bathroom, give the surface of the bath or basin a quick wipe to ensure you have not left any tell-tale scum or tide marks.
• Never treat the house like a hotel, where housekeeping will clean up all your messes and spillages – if you accidentally squirt some toothpaste on the mirror, for example, don’t leave it for someone else to clean up. Take responsibility for your own mess and clean it up yourself.
• After you have used your towels take them back to the room and find somewhere to leave them to dry. Don’t clutter up a communal bathroom with additional towels.
•While it’s fine to use a host’s toothpaste, shower gel or soap, restrain yourself from ferreting around the bathroom shelves and cupboards and don’t use the host’s own body lotions, shaving soap, shampoo and conditioner. If you have exclusive use of a guest bathroom, which is equipped with plentiful toiletries, the assumption is that you are being invited to use them.
• The kitchen is the host’s domain. You should never open a fridge or cupboard in a host’s house and help yourself to food unless you are invited to do so. The same goes for making your own tea or coffee – most hosts will show you where to find basics, breakfast cereals, bread etc. and invite you to help yourself, but you must wait until they do so.
• While many hosts will welcome your help in the kitchen and appreciate it if you offer to lay and clear the table or load the dishwasher, you should defer to the hosts at all times, ask “is there anything I can do?” or make a gesture towards giving a helping hand (eg starting to gather up the dirty plates from the table). If the host doesn’t want your help, they will tell you so.
• Respect your host’s space and do not leave any of your own clutter lying around. Ask where you should put dirty shoes, wellington boots, or coats. Never sling a discarded jacket over the bannisters or on a convenient chair. If you’re drinking tea or coffee, carry dirty cups through to the kitchen. Don’t leave books, or half-read magazines or newspapers scattered around the living area.
• If you find that your host’s home does not match up to your own exacting standards of tidiness and cleanliness, you must resolutely refuse to do anything about it. Unless you are explicitly requested to help out, you should never rearrange your host’s possessions, tidy up the living room, reorder d the bookshelves, polish their neglected bathroom fittings, or scrub their bath and tiles. All these actions, which might have been undertaken with the best of intentions, will look like a reproach to the host.
• Every host will want you to feel comfortable in their home, but they will also not want to feel that you have colonised their territory, leaving irrefutable evidence of your presence wherever you go.
A wise guest is a model of tact and discretion, who shares the host’s space with a light touch and leaves no discernible trace of their stay.
Apologising is part of everyday life – as often as not, the offence is minor, and the apology is automatic. But if a victim is truly wronged by your words or actions, it is imperative that you promptly apologise unreservedly for any offence you have caused.
The first, and most common, mistake is to say that you’re sorry “if” you caused offence or upset to the wounded party. Clearly the implication is that there has been no real transgression, simply a “victim” who insists on feeling hurt, traduced or insulted.
This is the very essence of the half-hearted apology. It may grudgingly recognise the victim’s sense of grievance, but there is no acceptance that this is a legitimate response to a provocation. Any notion of cause and effect is ruptured.
Another common error is to attempt to diminish the magnitude of the offence by belittling it using humour. This is a very dangerous ploy – often it is the perpetrator’s insensitivity that has led to the problem in the first place, so it is very unlikely that their attempts to make light of the issue, or raise a laugh about it, are going to be persuasive. On the contrary, they have added a new dimension of crassness to their original offence, confounding rather than mitigating their mistake.
Humour is a dangerous device when used to defuse a situation because it is so open to multiple interpretations – one person’s hilarious joke is somebody else’s asinine insult. You need to very sure of your ground before deploying this technique or you’ll simply end up further inflaming the situation.
A genuine apology fully recognises the nature of the offence, acknowledges the pain or discomfort that has been caused, and seeks forgiveness from the victim. Half-measures, jokes, belittling remarks, teasing – these are all feeble attempts to brush away responsibility for what has been said or done.
There will be no chance of defusing a situation and no damage limitation possible until the perpetrator recognises their personal responsibility.
We all know that hosting Christmas is hard work, so being asked to be a guest at Christmas should be an unmitigated pleasure, shouldn’t it?
Being a guest on big occasions such as Christmas can be very fraught. You may well find yourself having to channel the skills of a seasoned diplomat as you negotiate the ebbs and flows of your host’ mood swings and stress levels. You will have to be supremely flexible and cooperative, ready to do what you’re told and to participate in every kind of social mayhem. Above all, you will have to be grateful for everything and to look as if you’re enjoying yourself, whatever happens. Are you ready for the Christmas challenge?
• Come laden with goodies. Obviously, you will bring presents for all the family. But also ensure that you also come with plenty of good things to drink and some Christmas treats (a Stilton, box of truffles, Christmas pudding, mince pies, Christmas cake etc. etc.). If you ask your hosts what you can bring and are told “nothing”, ignore them. This kind of polite refusal is an example of kneejerk good manners and should never be taken literally. The vast majority of guests will feel better if they can actually contribute something. If you feel that your hosts are the type of people who over-indulge in a Christmas cornucopia, then bring flowers or a plant in a beautiful pot.
• By consenting to be a visitor you have forfeited your right to run the day as you see fit – just go with the flow and enjoy it. Under no circumstances should you display any surprise at the arrangements (“oh, I didn’t realise we weren’t eating until the evening”), and never start a sentence with the words “don’t you think it would be a good idea….”.
• Don’t be a party-pooper. If you have agreed to be a Christmas guest, you are under a moral obligation to enter into the Christmas spirit – no cynicism, no grumpiness, no sulking. You may not enjoy charades or sing-songs and may prefer to snooze away the afternoon in front of the TV, but that is not your prerogative. You must grit your teeth and get on with it. This is one occasion where you simply can’t bow out.
• Be assiduous about offering to help and keep an eye open for signs of panic and hysteria in your host – you might be able to step in and save the day. But if your offers are refused, remember no means no. For some hosts, a pack of well-meaning guests bumbling around their kitchen making an effort to help is the final straw. If your hosts insist that you do not lift a finger on Christmas Day, you must accede to their wishes, no matter how tempted you are to clear away the discarded wrapping paper or wash up the glasses.
• Keep your eyes open for potential pressure points and pre-empt problems. If the kids are beginning to blow, take the situation in hand – suggest a short walk, a turn around the garden, an expedition to another room to show off presents etc.
• Don’t make any demands. If there’s something on the TV that you desperately want to see, remind yourself that you can always stream it when you get home. If you’re anxious for a walk and none seems to be on offer, just say that you’re going to take a turn around the garden or round the block to get “a breath of fresh air”. Do this with the minimum of fuss, and somebody might join you.
• Never comment on your host’s way of doing things. You might have your own ideas of the Christmas ritual, but you must accept unquestioningly that your host knows best. So no remarks like “We always used to have our Christmas cake at 5 o’clock and the kids were in bed by 8…” Comments like these will always be seen as implied criticisms, and should be avoided at all costs.
• Calibrate your behaviour to your hosts’. If they’re big drinkers and you’re not, accept an offer of a glass of wine and take tiny sips, don’t make a big fuss about being a non-drinker. On the other hand, if they’re very moderate drinkers and your definition of a good Christmas Day is drinking steadily and getting thoroughly intoxicated, try to restrain your most indulgent impulses.
• Retain a sense of proportion. If you’re sleeping on an uncomfortable mattress and besieged by over-excited children at the crack of dawn, if you find the drawn-out lunch and games session purgatorial, if your hosts are bickering and getting on your nerves, remind yourself – it’s just one day a year and it will soon be over. Plaster a warm smile on your face and keep soldiering on.
• Thank the host effusively for his/her hospitality. This means not just expressing your gratitude as you leave, but also following up with a proper thank you letter. The letter should go beyond the usual platitudes, and mention something particular about the Christmas entertainment (eg “I loved the family charades after lunch on Christmas day, and thought the boxing day walk and pub ritual was a really great antidote to all the feasting…”). You should also reiterate your thanks for the presents you received.
• If you are an irredeemable Scrooge, then don’t inflict yourself, or your negativity, on other people at Christmas time. It’s also perfectly possible that, although you’re not Scrooge-like, you simply prefer your own company on Christmas Day. If that is the case, stick to your guns – you will probably endlessly having to explain yourself and reassure concerned relations that you won’t feel lonely and sad, but if that’s what you want, you should insist, and people should respect your wishes.
If you are hosting a Christmas meal, you will want your table to look celebratory and festive. Decorating your table is an excellent way of proclaiming that it is a special occasion, and it will be an encouraging sight to your guests on Christmas morning.
The basic rules do not vary when laying the table. Give each person as much elbow room as the table permits. Leave an even amount of space between places, ideally no less than 20 inches. Knives and spoons go on the right, forks on the left. The idea is always to work from the outside in. For formal dinners, pudding spoons and forks should be laid innermost and not above the place setting. If short of space, bring them to the table when pudding is served.
Formally, it is correct always to lay side plates – even if they are not going to be used – as they automatically provide sufficient elbow room. Napkins should be simply folded or rolled and placed on the side plates. It is helpful to have a table mat, correctly positioned about an inch from the table’s edge, at the centre of each place setting. Fashionable chargers, an oversized plate that is positioned underneath the dinner plate, may be used in preference to table mats but piling up too many plates at each place setting can look cluttered in a domestic setting.
The basics are large and small knives, large and small forks, teaspoons, dessert (pudding) spoons and forks, and tablespoons. There may be small blunt knives for butter, fish knives (depending on what you’re serving), soup spoons and extra small spoons for coffee, or for salt and mustard. Some people have different shaped spoons for soup and pudding, but cutlery design is not standard. If the dessert spoons are very small, then traditionally tablespoons are used for the soup.
Soup should be served in shallow bowls. Pudding, unless there is a lot of sauce, is served on small plates. A special dessert service with a decorative pattern may be used, or the same plates
as the first course.
The traditional diameters of plates are ten inches or a little more for dinner plates (main course), eight inches for pudding plates and six inches for side plates. With so many contemporary designs and shapes available this is just a guide, not a rule.
Glasses should be grouped or lined up on the right above the knives. A tumbler for water and two wine glasses, with the larger one for red wine, is usually enough.
If a pudding wine or champagne is served, a third, smaller wine glass is needed, though it does not necessarily have to be a champagne glass or flute.
If port is served, then separate glasses are also needed. Port is circulated in a decanter, starting with the host, in a clockwise direction around the table. It is correct to pass it on promptly, without putting it down, even if not drinking any.
Brandy and other after-dinner drinks may be served at the dining table with coffee (bring the glasses to the table if brandy is requested), or in the sitting room. It is considerate to have more soft drinks available after dinner.
Decorating tables is a very personal matter and there are really no rules, other than taste. A simple, immaculate, white double damask cloth is always an attractive starting point, or you may want to opt for a wooden tabletop. Seasonal flowers are traditional and can look beautiful, but arrangements should be low enough for guests to see over. At Christmas you may well choose an arrangement of twigs and branches, pussy willow and pinecones, mixed in with green ivy and holly. Alternatively, you could place a Christmas wreath in the centre of the table and stand candles within its circumference. A colour theme is fun – red and green is traditional, but you might opt for the metallic glow of silver or gold. Whatever decorations you choose, remember that you will need plenty of room for groaning serving platters, so either accommodate these in your table plan, or create decorations that can be easily removed to a sideboard during the meal.
Candles alone provide a flattering ambience, but plenty should be used to ensure that everyone can see their food – the old rule was six candles, in pairs, for eight people and so on. A statement candelabra will signal that this is a special occasion. Soft, additional indirect lighting such as picture lights, or down or uplighters, can help to get the right balance, and prevent your guests from having to peer at their food in the flickering half-light.
If silver is being used, clean it ahead of time to avoid the room smelling of polish. Both silver and glasses will usually benefit from a final polish once the table is laid.
These four letters pack a big punch. They represent a perfectly reasonable request from the host for guests to reply to invitations and make a simple commitment to attending or not attending the event.
The clue is in the word ‘commitment’. Nobody is forcing you to behave like an over-stretched and frantic social butterfly. Indeed, at this time of year especially, many of us may feel a bit inundated socially, and may well be considering turning down invitations. That is the guest’s prerogative, but it is important to note that, once a RSVP has been sent accepting an invitation, a commitment has been made, and it is important to honour it.
It is very easy, especially as the nights close in and the weather gets colder, to experience a last-minute aversion to the notion of going out to a party. But if you have already sent an RSVP accepting the invitation, you really are honour-bound to attend if possible. Last-minute cancellations are very distressing for hosts, who rely on RSVPs to manage expectations about social events. Once the bulk of their invitees have replied, they can make sure that the amount of food and drink they have ordered is commensurate with the projected number of guests and it is deeply discouraging to see their calculations about drink and food imploding, not to mention their anticipation of a party’s success.
If you’ve decided to drop out at the last minute, how are you proposing to convey this news? You should have the gumption to call up your hosts and explain why you’re not attending – and note, “I can’t be bothered” is not an acceptable excuse.
Increasingly, people are much more likely to shield themselves behind the ‘anonymity’ of texts and convey cancellations by text or WhatsApp. Either of these methods will feel perfunctory or careless to the host. A last-minute cancellation on a WhatsApp group chat, where other members of the group are also supposedly attending the party, may have the effect of bringing the whole house of cards down. Once one group member has cancelled, others may feel less compulsion to attend themselves, and may also cancel in turn – a chain reaction that is highly insulting to the host.
At any event, there will be certain guests that the host feels are vital to the success of the party, and they will be relieved and delighted when they receive notice that they have accepted the invitation. Last-minute cancellations from these guests will be especially galling. Conversely, if you feel you are a very unimportant footnote at a very big event, then you could plausibly argue that your absence will not inconvenience or disappoint anybody.
Everyone accepts that there are certain good reasons for dropping out of a party at very short notice – a sudden illness, a family emergency, a babysitting crisis etc. Even a disappointed host will accept that these are all reasonable excuses and will be more than ready to commiserate with the guest who has been forced to cancel.
Feeling apathetic, socially burnt-out or lazy are not similarly valid reasons. While you may genuinely be feeling all these things, it is irrefutable that you have brought this on yourself, and that you are basically suffering from a bad case of diary mismanagement – you should never have accepted the invitation in the first place, and you should recognise that, despite your miscalculation, you must adhere to your commitment.
You might feel daunted by the prospect of a social gathering at which you know only the host, but you will almost certainly have a better time than you expect. More importantly, you have already received the invitation, weighted up the pros and cons, and accepted, so you are really not in a position to let a last-minute attack of social anxiety change your mind.
Bear in mind that if you make a habit of dropping out at the eleventh hour you will soon get a reputation for being a flake, remembered more for being unreliable than for any social contribution you make.
Some of us will be contemplating the prospect of the Christmas season, and the winter cold, with trepidation, worried about rising costs of food and rocketing energy prices.
We may already have turned our homes into a battleground, where ‘thermostat wars’ are being waged with grim determination. All too often in a family or household, there is a division between the austere, economical, tough-it-out school of thought, and the opposing faction who loathe feeling cold, and whose only recourse as temperatures plummet is to turn up the thermostat and hunker down next to a radiator. People who are prepared to tolerate the cold are likely to espouse the virtues of exercise, thermal underwear and thick sweaters. Heat-lovers feel under attack and may become defensive about their stance. Teenagers, who like nothing more than spending hours in their rooms communicating with a range of electronic devices, are likely to demand that the heating is turned up high and be resistant to the warm sweater argument.
Clearly the solution lies somewhere in the middle ground. No one person in a collective household should be able to dictate temperature parameters to fellow householders, but it would certainly be a good idea to talk about the challenges and negotiate a collective agreement about heating and energy use. Compromises will need to be made: the Spartan may have to concede that the living room should be well heated in the evenings; the comfort-lover may have to accept that the heating will be turned down in the day and hot water bottles, woolly blankets etc will have to be deployed. Teenagers should be reminded about household economy, global warming etc, but you may have to accept that their acquiescence will be grudging at best.
A family, couple or shared household may well be able to reach an acceptable compromise, if they take everybody’s views into consideration. But what happens when you invite other people into your home?
The very essence of hosting is making sure your guests are comfortable. This means ensuring that they have been well fed, that they have been offered drinks at regular intervals, that they have somewhere relaxing to sit. Hosts should always be super-vigilant about the well-being of their guests. This goes well beyond monitoring empty plates and glasses. It also means looking out for tell-tale signs of fidgeting and discomfort and, above all, clear demonstrations that a guest is feeling the cold – shivering, sitting as close to the radiator as possible, piling on extra clothing are all clues that should not be ignored. This is especially important when you are entertaining elderly relatives, which is often the case at Christmas.
You may have settled on an economical approach to heating your home, but you will need to reappraise this over the Christmas season, and you will probably have to accept that – for a few days at least – your rules will have to be abandoned, and heating will need to be liberally provided.
If you are appalled by the impact that this will have on your energy bills, you may be able to offset some of these costs by taking your guests up on their offer to “bring something”. This standard request is conventionally offered, and frequently brushed aside. But this year, consider actually taking guests at their word, and politely asking them if they would mind bringing, for example, cheese, mince pies, a Christmas pudding, wine and so on. You don’t need to apologise – everyone knows that Christmas is a hard slog for the host, and they will genuinely want to contribute. Many guests will appreciate the opportunity to help because they feel uncomfortable in the role of passive recipient of Christmas largesse.
There are other ways in which you can control energy use over Christmas without inflicting discomfort on your guests. If they are staying overnight, you could only put on radiators in their bedrooms in the evening and ask them politely to turn them off in the daytime – most people will be joining in with the family festivities for most of their stay and not in their rooms, although elderly relatives might appreciate ‘time out’, in which case you will need to ensure their rooms are warm and cosy. You can always offer your guests hot water bottles….
No matter what, there will probably be someone in your Christmas party who feels the cold, so make sure you’re well-equipped with warm woollen throws and blankets, sheepskin lined slippers, woollen socks and so on. Show your guests where to find them, and invite them to help themselves if the need arises.
You may fear that, despite your best efforts, your house will be cold this Christmas – maybe it is old and draughty, or we might be in the middle of an Arctic blast. It’s fine to text or call your guests beforehand and explain that you’ll be doing your best to counteract the winter chill, but it might be a good idea to pack thermals and woollens, just in case. As long as recommending a DIY heating solution to your guests isn’t your only option, nobody will accuse you of being a bad host.
The exchange of Christmas cards – with their familiar iconography of robins, winter scenes, Santa Claus and seasonal rituals – dates to Victorian times. The first Christmas card is thought to have been sent by Henry Cole, a prominent civil servant, educator and director of the Victoria & Albert Museum, in 1843. He was instrumental in setting up the penny post, which meant that Victorian households were deluged with Christmas post. His solution to this dilemma was to print a seasonal card, with a design that featured three generations of his own family, which saved time but also satisfied social expectations.
Cole’s idea soon caught on, but early Christmas cards were expensive to produce, and only middle-class households could afford to indulge in this seasonal luxury. It was only in the 1880s, with advances in printing technology, that prices dropped and the custom of sending Christmas cards became widespread. New printing techniques meant that the cards combined colour, die-cutting and metallic inks. Commercial printers produced their own designs, which sold in vast numbers.
The Christmas card phenomenon was part of the Victorian transformation of Christmas. The Christmas tree, a German custom, was introduced by Prince Albert; carols, dating back to Medieval times, were revived by antiquarians and disseminated; Saint Nicholas had been reinvented as a sleigh-riding, gift-dispensing Father Christmas; Christmas crackers evolved from ‘fire-cracker sweets’, first sold by a confectioner in 1847. All of these Victorian innovations have become part of our Christmas repertoire, none more than the indispensable Christmas card.
Christmas cards were invented to be sent as an expression of seasonal good will and should be sent in this spirit. They are not an appropriate vehicle for self-promotion, so cards that feature company logos, or photographs of a ‘perfect’ family, are not in the Christmas spirit.
Choose your cards carefully. Remember that humorous cards, or cards with religious messages inside, may not be appreciated by everybody. It may be a good idea to buy two sets – one for those who will enjoy a light-hearted fun card, and another with a more generic Christmas theme. It is wise when sending cards to those of other faiths to avoid religious iconography and opt for the generic ‘Season’s Greetings’.
The tradition was to give the husband’s name before his wife’s, but this is entirely a matter of personal choice. If you are sending cards to semi-formal acquaintances, you may want to give your surname, but they should be signed with forenames included, e.g. from ‘John and Mary Smith’, not ‘Mr and Mrs John Smith’.
Christmas cards should preferably be handwritten in ink. If bespoke Christmas cards are pre-printed with the sender’s name, then the surname should be crossed through, or a personal handwritten message included for recipients on first-name terms with the senders.
It is fine to include a brief line – such as ‘we must catch up in the new year’ – but avoid writing an essay. Instead, you could include a short, personal letter on a separate sheet to friends or relatives who are rarely seen.
If you miss the post or receive a last-minute card from someone not on your list, then send a brief note, card or postcard with your best wishes. Alternatively, send a new year’s card. It is a matter of personal choice whether you send cards at all but remember that people who send them to you may be surprised not to receive one back.
Try, wherever possible, to post your cards. While it is acceptable (and sensible) to pop cards through your neighbours’ letterboxes in the run-up to Christmas, you should try and put cards to friends and relations in the mail. Even if you know you are seeing the friend in the days before Christmas, posting a card will make it more of an event (everyone loves to find a card on the doormat), and will avoid the potential awkwardness of giving someone a card when they are unprepared, and unable, to reciprocate.
Always stamp your Christmas cards; never use the office-franking machine. It smacks of last-minute panic and thoughtlessness.
Most usually included in Christmas cards, and increasingly manifesting as emails, round robin newsletters are best avoided. Because they are an inappropriate forum for describing difficulties, tragedies or traumas, they inevitably come across as relentlessly self-promoting – a bland and upbeat account of the preceding year for public consumption. True friends certainly deserve better than a ‘newsy’ round-up of the last year, especially if it is a rambling, boastful litany of the family’s achievements. Instead, include a short, personal letter with cards to friends or relatives who are rarely seen.
If you are sending an annual email to little-seen friends or relations, you can certainly copy and paste passages to save time, but it is vital that you top and tail your communication with a personal message, and enquiries about the recipient’s family.
The cost of postage has steadily risen and, if you have a long list of Christmas card recipients, this annual ritual may seem needlessly expensive, especially in these straitened times. Whatever your reason for not sending Christmas cards, it is a good idea to explain that you won’t be doing so, which will avoid people feeling they’ve been overlooked or forgotten.
If you are considering dispensing with Christmas cards, consider the alternatives carefully. Increasingly, e-mail cards appear to be an acceptable option, but before you go down that route consider the simple card-sending equation: the more trouble you have gone to (in selecting a beautiful card, handwriting a short and heartfelt message, posting the card in time for Christmas), the more value your gesture will have to the recipient. Email cards are, first and foremost, convenient, cheap and functional. They serve the purpose of marking the Christmas season, but they do not convey any added value. They are also likely to be a disappointment to members of the older generation, who adhere to long-established traditions.
If you are keen to economise, or streamline, when it comes to Christmas cards, it might be sensible to consider posting a smaller number of cards to a targeted list of people who you know will truly appreciate the gesture and sending email cards, or individual ‘Christmas emails’ to the rest.
If the whole Christmas card ritual feels like a pointless expenditure, or a tradition that you would be happy to reject, consider sending out individual text messages to close friends and family, wishing them a happy holiday season. You don’t want to look like the grinch that hates Christmas…
It’s a heart-warming tradition to exchange gifts at Christmas, but for all too many of us, the whole ritual is fraught with anxiety and dread. What if we’ve spent too much or too little? Or given an inappropriate present? Or insulted the recipient? Or caused crushing disappointment?
It’s all too easy to let these niggling worries dominate the days before Christmas, casting a cloud over the big day. So, remember these simple rules:
• It’s not all about you
All too often we turn present buying into our own personal psychodrama and forget that it’s all about giving pleasure to someone else. We may use presents to make a statement about ourselves – our wealth, our status, our generosity. Our presents are all about showing off our own attributes rather than our consideration of other people’s taste or needs.
• Focus on the recipient
Buying a good present is an act of empathy and imagination. It’s not an act of self-love. All too often people make the fatal error of lazily assuming if they want something enough, then everybody else is bound to share their aspirations. This kind of thinking can lead to disaster – the power tool set for the impractical dreamer, the latest tablet for a stubborn technophobe…
• Play detective
If you really want to be an accomplished present giver you need to pay attention in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Listen carefully to friends and family, look out for clues about what they love. Ask subtle, probing questions about hobbies, passions and aspirations. Take note of complaints about defective equipment, or things that are needed, but be very wary of the over-utilitarian present (the vacuum cleaner or carpet-shampooer might be a step too far). By assembling this intelligence, you will be equipping yourself to make excellent and targeted choices.
• Don’t turn proselytiser
Presents should give the recipients a glow of pleasure, not a stab of searing guilt. So never give books about self-improvement or ‘how to’ manuals and be very careful about weight loss books or items of exercise equipment. All these presents suggest very clearly that you feel the recipient is deficient in some way and, even if they agree with you, Christmas is not the time to make your point.
• Comparisons are odious
Present-giving should never be competitive. Unless you have agreed a strict budget with your friends and family, there are likely to be obvious discrepancies between the amounts different people have spent on their presents. Try not to compare what you’ve received with what you’ve given, and don’t spend Christmas Day eying up other people’s presents and doing mental arithmetic.
• Do what you’re told
If you ask someone what they want for Christmas, take note of what they say and do your utmost to get what they’ve asked for. By asking them for suggestions, you have opened the floodgates. You may very well not approve of what they’ve requested, or think it is a foolish waste of money, but you are duty-bound to do your best to acquiesce. If somebody asks for something that is way over your budget, tell them this immediately. There is no shame in admitting that you have set an upper limit, and it is better to pre-warn them of this, rather than disappointing them on Christmas Day.
• Keep within your budget
This obvious piece of advice is all too often ignored or cast aside when time is short, and inspiration is elusive. But if you stray well outside your budget and overspend on presents, you’re likely to feel a niggle of resentment, which you might be in danger of communicating to the hapless recipient.
• Never apologise, never explain
We’ve all felt a stab of anxiety or trepidation as we hand over a present, but don’t let those feelings turn you into an abject apologist (I’m sorry, I know you asked for xxxxx, but I couldn’t find it anywhere) or a rambling interpreter (I know it looks weird, but in fact it’s a really useful utensil…). A good present will speak for itself, without explanation or apology.
• Wrap it up
Even a very modest, or unimaginative, present will acquire added glamour and desirability by being well-wrapped. Presents that look like they’ve been ineptly bandaged in crumpled paper, with enthusiastic over-use of Sellotape, are a discouraging sight on Christmas morning, because they communicate carelessness and laziness – never a good trait in a gift-giver.
• Accept defeat
If you give someone a present and realise immediately that it has not been a success, don’t dig in and explain why you thought it was a good choice. Try and make light of it and move on – perhaps say “sorry, I don’t think I got that quite right. Don’t worry I’ve got a receipt and you can exchange it”.
The main thing is not to display feelings of defensiveness and to ensure that the disappointment doesn’t hang like a cloud over the festive proceedings.
Christmas is a convivial time of year when people get together for celebrations and conversation. It’s all about human contact so it’s important that you’re discriminating about how you use your digital devices. It’s fine if they’re used to facilitate get-togethers and spread seasonal cheer. But Christmas is a real, not a virtual event, so it’s important to ditch the phone and start celebrating in the real world.
Not everyone will be enjoying the picture-perfect Christmas this year. Some people will choose to go it alone; others will have solitude forced upon them by circumstances beyond their control. Some people will be working on Christmas Day. It is undoubtedly true that, in a wide range of challenging circumstances, mobiles can provide a lifeline, enabling people to talk to friends and relations in other countries, to Facetime on Christmas day, to send texts that reassure people who are alone that they have not been forgotten.
But for all the benefits of mobile technology on Christmas Day, there are also some serious downsides. People who use social media as a form of self-promotion, who endlessly post highly curated images of an idealised soft-focus Christmas, can do a great deal of damage to people who are feeling lonely or stressed. Faced with a less-than-exemplary family situation, it is all too easily to turn to social media, ostensibly for reasons of escapism, though all too often it can turn into a panorama of unattainable perfection, which merely reinforces feelings of inadequacy. Try to ration your social media use over Christmas, and fully enter the real world. Don’t look at Instagram; concentrate instead on the people who are sitting at your table. Value your own Christmas experience, not an aspirational ideal.
• Christmas cards are still an invaluable, and personal, way of keeping in touch with far-flung friends and relations. In these straitened times, however, you might want to cut down the number of cards you send, so it’s fine to explain to your nearest and dearest that you won’t be sending them cards – a personalised seasonal message by text, phone call or email, sent out to individuals, is quite acceptable.
• Avoid sending out generic eCards. They’re lazy and impersonal, and many people will find them lacking in Christmas spirit or just baffling.
• If you’re emailing instead of sending a Christmas card, make sure that you send out unique – and individual – messages to each of your recipients. Group emails, like round robins, are to be avoided.
• It’s fine to put general seasonal messages on social networking sites but avoid posting compromising photos. This is the time of year when we all let our hair down, but not everyone will appreciate the evidence being posted for all to see.
• Don’t get too carried away with festive chatter social media or WhatsApp. Spamming your friends and followers with endless Christmas wishes and updates will soon get tedious.
• Be very careful about Christmas clangers. If you’re refused a friend’s party invitation in favour of a better offer, it would be a real faux pas to post about your wonderful evening on social media and give the game away. Lapses of concentration, or an overexcited megadose of seasonal cheer, can all too easily lead to hurtful indiscretions, so don’t let your social media get out of hand.
• Christmas Day is all about socialising with family and friends and enjoying good food and good conversation. So don’t spend the big day glued to your mobile, interacting with your phone rather than your family.
• If you’re with your family on Christmas Day and you want to make some calls to friends elsewhere, be discreet about it. Take yourself somewhere private, where you can’t be overheard. You don’t want your family to feel like they’re your second-best option.
• Don’t turn into an obsessive Christmas photographer. If you chart every moment of the day with photos, and constantly badger unwilling relations to participate in a barrage of selfies, you may well get on people’s nerves, as they will justifiably feel you’re having more fun recording the day than living it. They might also be less than pleased to see endless photos of themselves, looking increasingly dilapidated and worse for wear, on social media.
• Ban all mobiles from the Christmas table. Eating together is all about sociability and it’s a real insult to the host and/or cook to be transfixed by your texts rather than the turkey and table talk.
• If you’re hosting at Christmas, accept that guests will want to stay connected over the festive period. If you have friends or family staying in your home, make sure that you have your WiFi password to hand, offer them access to your network, and hope that everyone adheres to good festive netiquette.
• Christmas is the perfect time to make a video call but choose your timing carefully. Nobody wants to be talking to virtual visitors during lunch so make sure everyone is aware of the Christmas Day timetable and adheres to it.
• Remember the power of the written word. If you are the lucky recipient of a generous present or lavish hospitality, then hand-writing a proper thank you letter is a much more elegant gesture than texting or emailing and will be noted and appreciated. It is fine to email or text your thanks for small presents.
As the most sociable weeks of the year approach, you will undoubtedly be contemplating hosting at least one dinner or lunch over the festive period. Many people will be apprehensive about this prospect, but if you follow our recommendations below you will soon find that being a perfect host is all about pragmatic expectations, forward planning and a keen sense of observation.
The first thing you must do is divest yourself of unrealistic aspirations. We’re all bombarded with images of perfection in the run-up to Christmas and may find it difficult to accept that we will inevitably fall short of the fantasy. The emphasis must be on doing the best we can – making our houses warm and welcoming, serving plentiful food and drink, gathering together a compatible and convivial group of people. The most memorable dinners will stand out because of the company and conversation, not the table decorations or hors d’oeuvres.
The recommendations below are for hosting a dinner party, but can easily be adapted for a less formal supper party:
• Start by thinking carefully about who you invite and don’t be too ambitious when it comes to numbers; really think about your capacity as a host, as well as the size of your dining table, and don’t overdo it.
• Before you even start planning what to cook, check out allergies and food intolerances. You really don’t want to be blindsided by a vegan on a night when you’re proudly serving your signature beef wellington.
• Do indicate the comparative formality of the event to guests. If you say “can you pop round for supper on Friday evening” your guests will quite reasonably turn up in casual attire. If you want proceedings to be much more formal, you will need to give your guests some verbal clues – either send them an invitation (or email version) or use phrases like “I’m having a dinner party on Friday”. You can even say “we’re all going to dress up!”.
• Choose to serve a dish that you have cooked before, which you can produce without too much agonising and fuss. Don’t fall into the trap of choosing an over-intricate and elaborate dish that is beyond your culinary prowess – it’s far better to serve something simple like a well-cooked roast chicken than to spend hours sweating over a complex recipe and overwhelming list of ingredients.
• Do as much preparation as humanly possible beforehand – peel and chop vegetables and stand them in water, make sauces that can be re-heated, concoct cold desserts like sherry trifle or compote, or prepare baked puddings so they are ready to pop into the oven once the main course has been cooked. Preparing in advance will also give you an opportunity to wash up your utensils and clean kitchen surfaces. If a well-intentioned guest wanders into the kitchen with a pile of dirty dishes they won’t be assaulted by an embarrassing scene of devastation. You might be serving the meal in the kitchen; in which case it is all the more important that you eradicate any signs of cooking panic.
• Take the time to tidy up beforehand and create a warm and welcoming atmosphere. Put out glasses for aperitifs or wine, have bowls of nibbles ready. Decide what you’re going to do when the guests first arrive – you don’t want a pile-up of guests milling around in the hall, uncertain where to put their coats – and maybe make your partner or one of your children responsible for taking coats and ushering guests into the sitting or dining room.
• Lay the table well before the guests arrive – candles, table ornaments, flower arrangements (though not too high or they’ll obstruct eye contact) will all denote that this is a special occasion. Ensure that you have generous supplies of both red and white wine (and soft drinks). Always supply water – a jug of iced tap water is perfectly acceptable.
• If you’re determined that your guests should sit in a certain arrangement – perhaps there are people you really want to introduce to each other or keep apart – hand-write name cards and place them in the middle of each place setting. If you don’t want this level of formality, accept that you will have to direct your guests to their seats when it’s time to go to the table. Remember, it’s your job to ensure that conversation flows, so arrange your guests to optimise this possibility – the shy introvert next to the exuberant conversationalist, the two people with an interest in common adjacent and so on.
• If you have prepared thoroughly beforehand, you should be able to spend time with your guests when they first arrive, but don’t get too carried away. Ensure that guests start eating within a reasonable time of arriving – an hour to an hour-and-a-half is enough time for everyone to settle in and have one or two aperitifs. Serve some canapés to ensure that guests aren’t drinking on an empty stomach.
• Ensure the food is ready when you call everyone in for dinner. Starters should be on the table (or about to be) and the main course on hold, ready to be served up shortly (without getting spoilt).
Clear starter plates promptly, but always make sure that everyone has finished. Allow people to linger over their empty main course plates for a little longer, especially if there are serving dishes on the table with seconds to be had.
• Once everyone is seated around the table and the food has been served you will need to employ your powers of observation. A good host will refill a wine glass as soon as it is emptied or pass a serving dish if required. But don’t be over-insistent; guests will inevitably refuse a re-fill or pass over certain dishes, and you must never try to persuade them to change their minds.
• You will need to ensure that everyone is involved in the conversation – if they’re not actually talking, check that they’re listening with interest, rather than looking bored or left out. If there are signs of ennui or estrangement, intervene; ask a question, solicit an opinion, bring another person or point of view into the conversation.
• If you see your guests reaching for their winter woollens, you’ll know that you’ve been too stingy with the heating; conversely, red faces and divested clothing means you’ve probably overdone it. If in doubt, just ask and make sure everybody is comfortable.
• Don’t rush people, and don’t completely clear the table while they are still sitting there. Remove dirty dishes, but don’t act like you’re trying to load the dishwasher around them. You need to come across as relaxed and laid back, unphased by the mounting washing up; you don’t want to look like an obsessive housekeeper. Take the lead and ask people to leave the table for coffee and aperitifs. Guests will normally appreciate a change of scene and a more comfortable chair at the end of the evening.
• Ideally you will stay up until your last guest leaves. If it’s all going on too long, employ subtle hints: cups of coffee, offers of taxi cab numbers or spare beds, gentle clearing up. If it’s horribly late and you’re dead on your feet, your last resort is to say, “I’m sorry, I’m absolutely exhausted, I’m afraid I’ll have to go to bed now.” Even the most boorish guests should take the hint and make an exit.
