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Socials and Parties
PERHAPS you're appointed chairman of the social committee of your young people's church society of or some club.
Or maybe you want to entertain for a friend who is visiting you so that she may meet your circle of friends. Anyway it's up to you to plan an evening's amusement for a big crowd of people. If it's a mixed crowd young and old and in-between (as church socials often are) you need one kind of plan; if it's a bunch of young folks, or a school class party, or something for the children, you need other plans. But the secret of all good times for big crowds is to choose entertainment that draws the individuals together in some kind of comradeship, gives them all something in common, and puts them on a friendly footing. [15] ON
This is a chapter opening rather than a plan, and it states the book’s whole argument in two paragraphs: the crowd decides the entertainment, and the object is to put people on a friendly footing.
- Who is in the room comes firstThe paragraph sorts by crowd before anything else: a mixed-age church social, a group of young people, a school class, the children. Who is present decides the plan, and the book will not let a reader skip that question and go straight to decorations.
- Chairman of the social committeeThe reader being addressed has been appointed, not inspired. Church societies and clubs ran on committees, and the social committee’s chairman was expected to produce an evening’s entertainment for a crowd, on a volunteer budget, on a date somebody else had fixed.
- The stated objectThe paragraph names it outright: entertainment that draws individuals together, gives them something in common and puts them on a friendly footing. Every guessing game and paper costume in the book is in service of that one sentence, and it is a sounder theory of a party than most.
- Mixed ages were the hard caseThe text singles out crowds of young and old and in-between, as church socials often were. A plan built for a room of twenty-year-olds will not survive grandparents and children, and the book’s answer throughout is the game that everyone can do badly: guessing, acting, wearing something foolish.
- No food in the thesisThe opening says nothing at all about refreshments. In this book food is the last thing decided and the first thing matched to the colour scheme. The plan is the programme, and the menu is fitted to it afterwards.
The institution standing behind this chapter is the young people’s church society: a congregation’s organised social life for its unmarried members, with officers, a committee and a calendar of evenings that had to be filled. Somebody had to fill them. That somebody was usually a young woman, and she had a hall, some paper, no money and a crowd of people who had not chosen each other’s company. Books of this kind sold in quantity because the job was real, recurring and unpaid. You can hear it in the tone of the opening, which does not flatter the reader or assume any enthusiasm: perhaps you are appointed chairman, or perhaps you want to entertain for a friend, and anyway it is up to you. That is a book written for a volunteer who did not ask for the work and cannot get out of it.