Tea and Wine Parties

As things wind down here, there are little ‘end of exam’ parties and ‘farewell’ parties. One ‘end of exam’ party that I went to was actually a tea party. It was, bar none, the best lemon green tea I have ever had the pleasure to drink. It was quite the erudite tea party complete with sweet biscuits and references to Derrida. The talk was cheerful and wide ranging on lots of topics. One fascinating project that a young man is working on is tentatively called ‘Reporting Realities’. He is working on a multiple encryption program with lots of technical rerouting of information through anonymous servers which would allow journalists in Eastern European countries to report what is happening completely anonymously and uncensored. He would put the system on a flashdrive, so nothing at all would be left on the hard drive or browser history of the actual computer that the journalist was using. It seems that the computers of Eastern European journalists are often confiscated. Then this daring young person would receive the reports, translate them into English and publish them in both the original language and English. He would also send them as press releases to UNESCO, UNICEF, you know, The People Who Would Like To Know what is actually going on. I suggested to this young person’s partner that Kevlar might be a nice holiday gift. Also at one point as the conversation veered off in another direction, someone unearthed (on the computer) an archival article from the New York Times with the headline ‘Jazz Scares Bears’. This article reported that villagers in Russia would protect themselves from marauding bears by ‘forming a tin-pan orchestra’ and banging the pots, pans, and samovars (I am not making this up) which would frighten the bears away. Funnier than the whole ursine problem was the fact that the reporter was calling banging on a pot jazz. That was one good tea party.

The next even I attended included alcohol. Gluhwein was the beverage of choice and there was much debate concerning the temperature. Hot or ‘blood-warm’? It was awfully sweet. Bulmer’s Cider was the other popular beverage, and I think a bottle of Baily’s got emptied in the course of the evening. This was a crew of sugar fiends, I’m telling you. Knowing this ahead of time, I had brought my own Cabernet, and they all laughed at the American who brought her own drink and served herself. I explained, in my best anthropological way, that in America, politeness is expressed by allowing the guest as much autonomy and choice as possible, hence the phrase, “Help yourself” or “Make yourself at home.” In contrast, Irish hospitality (and Scandinavian evidently) requires that the guest not be required to do anything for him or herself. A good host will anticipate the guest’s requirements and should be able to provide them before the guest knows that it is a requirement. I pointed out that in this system sometimes the guest gets something he or she is required to eat or drink that might be challenging. The Finn agreed that this was the case, but it is a politeness move on the part of the guest to just eat or drink what you get. She commented that she had always been sort of weirded out by the incomprehensible “Help yourself” when she had visited American homes, but now it made sense: it was a politeness move to not impose things on the guest. Ah, another job well done in the name of international peace and comfort by Anthro-grrl!

This particular party was attended by people who were all performers. There was a brilliant dancer, four ritual chant singers, a fiddle player, a piper, and me. Everybody sang a song for the group, there was dancing, some amazing Coptic chant, some Swedish cow calling that must be heard to be believed, some Norwegian folk tunes, some Sean Nós dancing, a blues song, an Appalachian folk song, and we danced the Salty Dog Rag to a reel. Now that was a party. Not only were people willing to perform, but the audience was interested and attentive. You need both: and the performer can be terrible as long as the audience is good. I am thinking of some extremely boring parties I have attended in the US where people just sat around and talked about martial arts and tv shows. Nobody would DO anything, and a huge group always ended up watching videos. How much more fun it is when people participate. I also think about Christmas with my ‘family of origin’ where there is lots of music and singing and some form of silly dancing of one kind or another (mostly jumping in circles with the toddlers, last Christmas). And that is also great good fun. My New Year’s resolution is to try to have more Fun Parties.