Cultural Currency

or “dull,” the concept of “normal” is shockingly broad. Consider the great disparity between enchiladas, chicken coq a vin, bangers and mash, macaroni and cheese, beef bourguignon, club sandwiches, and Italian wedding soup, yet all these dishes would pass as perfectly normal were someone to serve them to you. Or, survey the ladies at church next Sunday and consider all the different kinds of women’s clothes that pass for “normal.” Similarly, “normal behavior” is a wide and forgiving concept that gives sanctuary to melancholic, sanguine, choleric, and phlegmatic personalities. If a man became quickly irritated with his children making obnoxious noises, or if he was very patient with their racket, neither would strike me as abnormal. At the same time, we have far more experience with normal dishes and normal clothes than we do with normal families in their normal homes. Very few of us frequent other people’s homes for dinner—or, we may often visit a certain family for dinner, but we do not go to many other people’s homes. In the last six years, I have dined in fewer than ten family homes, and apart from pastors and priests, I suspect most people would report similar numbers. Thus, when it comes to determining what a “normal family” is, we have relatively little experience. In the generosity of our thoughts, we can imagine quite a bit about other families being normal, even if we do things differently: paper napkins or cloth, music or no music, tour or no tour for the guests, expensive wine or cheap, cigarette after dinner or no, all these habits seem like they might be well-appointed. At the same time, dining with others often means stretching our understanding of what “normal” means, because some grown men enjoy a glass of cold juice with their spaghetti and meatballs. I am not necessarily concluding such a thing falls within the range of “normal,” but many years ago, I did spend an entire meal at the home of someone I knew turning this issue in my mind. It is one thing to say people are different at home than they are in public. In truth, people are far more strange in their homes than they are elsewhere.

In our homes, the local climate of “normal” takes over. Each member of a family has his or her own distinct personality, but, taken all together, a family is an autonomous person all its own. Each member of the family borrows something from the family person, and yet the family person is distinct. To bring someone into your home is to introduce them to the family person—the fifth member of a family of four, the sixth member of a family of five—a being who cannot entirely be controlled or understood by any single member of the family. The family person is a zeitgeist particular to a single mailing address, a surname daemon, an organizing spirit which is somehow beneath everything the family does, and thus invisible, but also over everything the family does, and thus obvious. Richly territorial, the family person never leaves the home, which means the only way of encountering other family persons is to enter the homes of other families. Nonetheless, one catches oblique hints about every family’s person when an individual member speaks of their life at home, their holiday customs, and what kind of gifts the family buys for itself. The family person is a self-contained culture which is capable of determining what is normal unto itself, though it should not be confused with “house rules,” which are arbitrary laws designed for children by their parents so that order may prevail. But even mother and father are beholden to the family person, for children may appeal to longstanding determinations of the family person when arguing for various rights they have accrued through tradition.

I do not mean to paint the family person in a negative light, though calling it a “zeitgeist” and a “daemon” may sound ominous. In truth, most family persons are almost entirely predictable; however, it is simply the case that everyone believes some particular thing his family person does is normal when, in fact, it is absolutely not. Once, in my twenties, a friend asked me, “You mean your parents didn’t send the children out of the house on Sunday afternoon when they were going to . . . ?” I thought his question the ne plus ultra of weird, but he was entirely matter-of-fact.

Most of the time, the family person is less of a pagan god than a butler, perhaps like Mr. Carson in Downton Abbey or Tommy Lascelles in The Crown, both of whom are servants only in theory. In practice, they are authoritative compilers of convention. While such figures cannot be wholly controlled, they can be dressed in finery and instructed to put on a show for guests. Around the time I turned thirty-three, I realized that having the family person put on a show was not simply a hobby or a social obligation to be enjoyed from time to time. In fact, it is arguably the highest calling of civilization.

Part II: Formality

Christians have written an awful lot over the last twenty years on the subject of hospitality, and much of what they have said is overtaxed with theological poetry that is so florid and so precious, I wonder if the writers actually enjoy having people over.

Thirty years ago, having people over was a pain in the neck. Sadly, it is no longer a pain in the neck, for “scruffy hospitality” has entered into the popular lexicon, and now, in addition to distressed jeans and antiqued furniture, many people think not vacuuming be- fore guests come over a sign of genuine enlightenment. Alas, one more casualty of the casual revolution. When I was a child, my mother would clean the bath before guests came, even though she pulled the shower curtain closed when she finished. As a teenager, I questioned my mother’s sanity over such habits, and asked if she expected the guests to peak behind the shower curtain when no one was looking, to which she always replied, “You never know.” As an adult, I appreciate my mother’s attention to detail. Of course, I am by no means disparaging the potluck, the backyard barbecue, or the post hoc invitation to “drop by for a drink,” all of which are quite informal, yet wonderfully cheer the spirit, prop up friendships, and promote communal bon homie. Such affairs need not be productions, which is to say they do not require us to scrub the tub.

And yet, for a middle-class or upper-class Christian family in a post-Christian society, putting on an evening for friends is the last remaining cultural heirloom we have from what was once called “polite society.” We have otherwise traded classical music for popular music, theater for television, business suits for tracksuits, funerals for celebratory slide shows, and we have more or less given up on dowries, tipping hats, a need for veils, holding doors, “sir” and “ma’am,” hardback books, thank you cards, and formal apologies—although, there yet remain a very few churchgoing people in the world who still invite friends over for dinner and “do it up right,” by which I mean there is nearly a bottle of wine reserved for each adult, the napkins are ironed, candles are lit, several courses are served, the food is plated, and three or four hours is set aside to enjoy it all.

During such evenings, the hosting family proposes a vision of civilization for their guests. We may not design worship services however we see fit, neither may any individual reframe the government according to his own prejudices, but we can choose how we serve our friends dinner, and there is no law which prohibits going all out. While “civilization” is a notoriously tricky word to define, I like Donald Kagan’s simple definition that civilization exists wherever individuals are not self-sufficient. When people must depend on one another, civilization has emerged. Of course, we depend on others in a variety of ways. I depend on my priest, but not for my income. I depend on my school, but not for penance. Obviously, a dinner invitation is a kind of gift, and if men did not have souls, giving gifts would simply be a slow form of suicide. It may sound like a tautology, but I depend on my friends for their friendship, and putting on a dinner for friends is a way of ornamenting the friendship, beautifying it. There is some sense in which the duties a husband pays to his wife are paid to all women, for while every marriage concerns individuals, marriage as a whole is an institution given for the care of mankind and womankind, which is why husbands and wives have roles. The husband plays the man, the wife plays the woman, the couple plays Christ and the church. Likewise, one cannot have friends over for dinner without making some sort of claim about what all human beings deserve and need. For the same reason we ought to call strangers “sir,” we ought to—from time to time—offer our friends the best we have.

I have come too close to theologizing hospitality, though, and before going too far down that road, I should say the best reason to have friends over for a long, elaborate dinner is this: if you commit your attention (and conversation) to someone else for an entire evening, and if you treat them well and refill their glass often (and if you clean the house before they arrive, perhaps as a way of preaching a sermon to yourself about human dignity), and if your purpose is to give your tired and weary friends rest from the vulgarity and misery of the City of Man, they will begin to reveal their hearts to you in new and profound ways. If you put on a show, and if the family person plays the valet, and if you treat your friends like visiting dignitaries, you will begin to see what people are made for. In vino veritas. Between sobriety and drunkenness is a dazzling, protean range of unguarded, honest emotions and opinions that cannot be coaxed out of a man apart from the safety which comes when he is honored. While these emotions and opinions are not “the real man,” as though the public persona were mere fakery, they are a real side of a man which will atrophy if it is not given occasions to breathe. In such a state, a man is neither an employer nor an employee, neither a Democrat nor a Republican, neither a Baptist nor a Catholic. He is free. On the sabbath, as in death, slaves and masters are equal.

When Christ was born, He was given gold, frankincense, and myrrh, not because of what He had accomplished, but because of what He was. Likewise, we clean our houses for our friends because we are their housekeepers. We take their coats because we are their maids. We recommend the Saint-Émilion grand cru 2014 because we are the stewards of their cellars. You can make a lord of a man—change his very nature, even if just for the evening—if you’re willing to give your life over to him. And what a thrill! How worth the expense! It is not every day one gets to dine with nobility.

Joshua Gibbs is the author of How to Be Unlucky, Something They Will Not Forget, and The 25th: New and Selected Christmas Essays.