14 Years Ago Today: Holiday frivolity

By Moristotle

[Originally published, without an image, on December 14, 2006.]

My wife and I went to a party last weekend. The neighbors in a house behind ours [on Ironwood Place in Chapel Hill, North Carolina] (visible only during the defoliated time of the year) were throwing their annual “Holiday Party.” The dining room table was groaning with plates piled high with food. Every wall and mantle on the first floor of their huge house (the house’s floor space probably approaching 4,000 square feet) were decorated with ornaments of the season, whether the pagan Yuletide or Christmas, or even of Eid or Hanukka or Kwanzaa. I couldn’t help but wonder where all of this stuff got stored the rest of the year.
    Because we were among the first of scores of people eventually to arrive, we were able to hear and be heard by our hosts when they greeted us upon our arrival. But as the house filled up, conversation became less and less possible. Not that it mattered that much, in my opinion, so little of consequence that I could actually hear was uttered by anybody. We’d already had dinner and I avoid alcohol in the evening because it aggravates my acid reflux, so I didn’t eat or drink anything. However, to keep it simple when we were leaving and our hostess asked me whether I’d had some food, I said, “Oh, yes, thanks!”

My sense of a wasted evening came back to me when I read the following passage in Colm Tóibín’s novel, The Master. It’s New Year’s Day 1900. Henry James has as guests at Lamb House his brother William, William’s wife Alice, and their daughter Peggy. Edmund Gosse, the English poet, author, and critic, comes to lunch.

Gosse arrived with small presents from London, and immediately declared that he was the happiest man in England now that he had quit the city, that it was a hateful place during the festive season, with far too frivolous a social life and an unspeakable fog, some of which had entered into the crania of the very best minds of his generation. [emphases mine]

    Gosse’s criticism of London is significant, for as Henry has already told Peggy, preparatory to the man’s visit,

the main fact about Gosse is that he loves London more than he loves life. So when your father mentions the quiet intellectual life in Boston, he will not understand. The man who is tired of London is tired of life, that is his motto. So you, my dear girl, had better find a subject on which your father and our guest can agree.

    I trust that my failure to appreciate the party in my neighborhood doesn’t indicate that I’m “tired of life,” but rather simply that I’m averse to a certain kind of mentally foggy frivolity. I guess it wouldn’t be too unfair to refer to my attitude as, “Bah, humbug!”

Hmm, I wrote all that a couple of hours ago. Since then I’ve thought about it and just had a conversation with a colleague (in connection with another holiday party, next week) about how neither of us can remember people’s names (or faces) as well anymore. “It’s embarrassing.” I’m wondering whether my growing disinclination to attend parties is a function of aging as much as of anything. I mean, maybe I used to be able to hear a conversation conducted in the middle of a frivolous party.
    I’m sure that has something to do with it. Maybe aging even influences my tolerance for chit-chat (including chit-chat that I can hear perfectly well). Time speeds up as we get older (it really does seem to), so maybe we feel the need to use our time more wisely or productively than we would if were standing around listening to things we’ve already heard a million times...and saying things we’ve already said a few times too....
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A note today: Reading the conversation that ensued from the original post (see the comments) was even more interesting than the post, not least because it brought back memories of the individuals I was in contact with those 14 years ago: Steve, Astrology Memphis, Lee, Serena. Hello, if you’re within earshot!

Copyright © 2006, 2020 by Moristotle