Let's look at some party planning ideas that would be in consort
with developing holiday warmth...
There are many approaches to celebrations that will embed them
warmly in your guests’ memories. The one thing that probably isn’t
appropriate is sheer entertainment. That is, if your goal is merely
to entertain, that puts the focus entirely on you and the
entertainment and not on your guests and their cohesion. Some
sort of planned entertainment might be a fun focal point - but
if that’s the underlying goal, the people might as well not
have gotten together. (You can get a group of
people together to go to a movie, but they’re not really
enjoying togetherness while they’re watching something they
could just as well see on a TV while alone. …It would be
before or after the entertainment that the real party would take
place - I would so hope!)
Let your entertainment "fuse" with the occasion...
Let it be the surprise that serves as an "aide memoire"
to draw people's attention back to the delightful experience in
memory later on. ...As would, for example, a one-color meal!
(I've served two such meals, one all white and one all green.
I'll let you figure out what I might have served. I suppose my
next one might be red.) Or a juice-tasting party? - where
everyone gets to taste a series of fruit/veggie juices blended
fresh on the spot (and guess at the ingredients?:
carrot/beet/celery/apple might be a good stumper, for
instance... but very tasty!) Give 'em some hook to hang the good
memories on.
The art of hospitality is about giving to others; it’s also
about blending - with others, and blending the others together
as a whole. And then there’s the magic! (artistry that has a
life of its own as it sparks from one participant to the other,
and carries on in the memory when everyone has gone home). Look
for ways to link together hearts and minds, and your party can’t
possibly be run-of-the-mill.
You’ll find that a number of these celebratory principles
will merge in a single event...
