How to Be a Good Host
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The excerpt below is good advice for anyone who wants to host a party but is unsure how to present themselves. Like a lot of other things in life, one of the keys to being a good party host is to be yourself. The book is from 1979, so some of the language is humorous, but there's still some truth here about what makes a good host (and a good party).
Title: How to Plan Successful Parties Author: Dennis Castle Excerpt: |
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Host and Hostess
Money in itself does not make a party a success but your personality as host or hostess does. Your own image of yourself will never be quite the same as it appears to others. After all we are bound to be biased in our own favour! But if you can take a candid, positive look at yourself, considering your limitations as well as your advantages, you will handle your parties effectively. It is useless to discuss the merits of famous and socially accepted 'greats' among hosts and hostesses, for to copy them would spell disaster. Most of them had fortunes behind them anyway, otherwise they would never have gained any reputation at all. While there was a snob structure about such glittering parties with Hollywood settings, the main reason for their success lay in the character of the hostesses (rather than hosts in this context). Hundreds of opulent parties are given but only the few can make them outstanding and original. Cash won't buy flair.
Your parties must reflect your true character. If you are not by nature a jet-set hostess, don't try to put on an act as one by trying to stage a rave-up party completely foreign to your normal personality. A lot of well-meaning party-throwers try to change their image just for the occasion, become arch, coy or daring and the transparent artificiality bewilders the guests. They know the normal quiet nature of their host or hostess far too intimately to accept the false front. In a crude American term you are using your 'non-self'. Like a parson I once heard at a stag party telling feeble stories about lavatory grafiti...it is a miserable attempt to be 'with-it', insincere and stupid. So when we host a party we must at all times be ourselves, although we have to exercise more patience with our guests in our home than perhaps we might with our own family!
Your parties too must aim to suit the majority of your guests. For example, the host who runs his every party on lines appreciated solely by his football club mates, with choruses round the piano and much beer swilling and blue jokes, inevitably makes a hash of a mixed party. It is not that the modern women wish to be treated more delicately than footballers, it is not even a matter of preference among sexes - but of poor party ingredient. Too often hosts, rather than hostesses, confine their parties to a certain monotonous pattern and standard of intellect forgetting that their idea of personal fun is by no means universally appreciated. Once they invite guests beyond their own circle of cronies, they, too, must broaden their concepts of amusement. Obviously it is good experience for them - if they are not too intolerant in the first place. Corralling a wide selection of guests as if they are all the same rand of cattle will soon start them horning each other in sheer frustration.
- from "How to Plan Successful Parties," by Dennis Castle
Your parties must reflect your true character. If you are not by nature a jet-set hostess, don't try to put on an act as one by trying to stage a rave-up party completely foreign to your normal personality. A lot of well-meaning party-throwers try to change their image just for the occasion, become arch, coy or daring and the transparent artificiality bewilders the guests. They know the normal quiet nature of their host or hostess far too intimately to accept the false front. In a crude American term you are using your 'non-self'. Like a parson I once heard at a stag party telling feeble stories about lavatory grafiti...it is a miserable attempt to be 'with-it', insincere and stupid. So when we host a party we must at all times be ourselves, although we have to exercise more patience with our guests in our home than perhaps we might with our own family!
Your parties too must aim to suit the majority of your guests. For example, the host who runs his every party on lines appreciated solely by his football club mates, with choruses round the piano and much beer swilling and blue jokes, inevitably makes a hash of a mixed party. It is not that the modern women wish to be treated more delicately than footballers, it is not even a matter of preference among sexes - but of poor party ingredient. Too often hosts, rather than hostesses, confine their parties to a certain monotonous pattern and standard of intellect forgetting that their idea of personal fun is by no means universally appreciated. Once they invite guests beyond their own circle of cronies, they, too, must broaden their concepts of amusement. Obviously it is good experience for them - if they are not too intolerant in the first place. Corralling a wide selection of guests as if they are all the same rand of cattle will soon start them horning each other in sheer frustration.
- from "How to Plan Successful Parties," by Dennis Castle