As the holiday season shifts into high gear, here’s a plea for a different kind of moderation: let’s all hear it (softly please) for moderate hosting. Moderate hosting means fighting the urge to measure your success as a host by the amount of food and alcohol and sociability your guests consume. It means not pressing the matter when a guest turns down an alcoholic drink, or a second helping of pie, or a third pass under the mistletoe, and keeping in mind the golden rule of being a great host: always make your guests feel comfortable.
A number of years ago I was facilitating a therapy group for women addressing their addiction to alcohol. As part of the group, participants committed to abstaining from alcohol for the 8-week duration of the program. Although alcohol misuse is not an issue for me, I decided that I would support the women’s commitment by also refraining from alcohol use for the length of the group. That proved to be a lot more challenging than I’d anticipated. I thought having an alcohol-free life for 8 weeks would be pretty straightforward; if I chose not to seek out alcohol, alcohol wouldn’t seek me out. What I found instead was that abstaining from alcohol also required active – and often persistent – turning down of alcoholic offerings made by active, persistent, and no doubt well-intentioned hosts.
Similarly, the abundance of food that most of us are blessed to be surrounded by during the holidays can have a very different meaning for some people. Many of the men and women I work with are struggling to establish a “normal” relationship with food, one that is free from feelings of fear, panic, self-loathing, and loss of control. For these people, taking the underlying stress of the holiday season, combining it with omnipresent feasts and desserts, and stirring in a host who insists that, “these are my specialty, you have to try one”, is a recipe for disaster.
Lastly, a word on behalf of the socially introverted among us. I grew up in a Greek household, where “family” included anyone who knew someone who was your mother’s second cousin, and the party didn’t really start until someone started breaking plates. As a painfully shy kid, family holiday gatherings with their obligatory hug and 3 kisses with relatives I hadn’t seen in a year felt more like trials to be endured than celebrations to be enjoyed.
So here are my tips for being the host or hostess with the most this holiday season: have plenty of festive and appetizing-looking non-alcoholic drink options available. Don’t question, cajole, implore or otherwise stress out a guest who turns down alcohol. Have some fruit or other light dessert options available. Don’t press food on your guests or treat a refusal as a personal affront. Don’t pressure your guests to behave more socially than they want to; if you make a comfortable and accepting environment for your guests, they’ll find their own zone (and if that happens to be huddling happily under the coats reading Twilight, at least you’ve given them the space to be themselves!)
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