Television Watching Etiquette

Is it proper for a guest to request a specific show or none at all? When is it all right for TV to be the focus of a social situation? May the television be on during dinner? What about the place of the remote control? What about the volume? —1983 Advertisement for televisions with their sale prices. 

Social propriety of television

MISS MANNERS — IS THERE SUCH a thing as television etiquette? My specific questions relate to TV watching and guests, visiting relatives and the role of the host. When is it proper for a host to ask for quiet from the visitors when watching TV? Does this depend on whether the visitors are relatives or other guests? Does it matter if the situation involves dinner, a casual visit or a transactional situation?

Is it proper for a guest to request a specific show or none at all? When is it all right for TV to be the focus of a social situation? May the television be on during dinner? What about the place of the remote control? What about the volume?

If someone has made an advance call and received permission to visit, and upon arrival is offered a refreshment, is the visitor required to accommodate him/herself to the TV show in progress? Is the regular TV watcher ever expected to alter his/her habits? Or should all socializing with the TV addict take into consideration this affliction?

What about reading and telephone addicts? Is there hope for socializing among people of different TV traditions?

GENTLE READER Not while that thing is on. Please turn it off so that we can converse. Conversation is, in fact, the chief feature (nicely supplemented by food and drink) of all social engagements unless another activity has been announced in advance. You can invite people to watch television or roller skate, play whist, paint the house, spin the bottle, stuff envelopes or but only if you specify the move the piano activity, so that the guest can plead a previous engagement to attend a funeral that day.

The host should be alert to setting the volume at an agreeable level and, unless the invitation specified the program to be watched, consider suggestions on what to watch.

Communal television watching has no point if it does not include the exchange of smart remarks. You can thus only shush people to the extent of saying something like “Hey, wait a minute, I think they're about to announce the results.”

Television watching should not be even an incidental part of any other visiting, unless during a visit that is either long a weekend or more or of such a frequent nature someone who drops by often that the actual socializing is intermittent. The same goes for reading or telephoning. You need not suspend your normal activities for someone who is always there, although Miss Manners assumes here the normal household politeness of checking to see that one is not interfering with the comforts of another.

Mind you, Miss Manners is not condemning the television addicts. All they need do to watch their program uninterrupted is to refrain from inviting people or from agreeing to visits that are proposed to them. She will even forgive them for saying “Oh, I'm so sorry, 8 tonight is a bad time for me I have a firm commitment then, and won't be free until quite late” instead of explaining why they always seem to be tied up during primetime. — By Miss Manners, aka Judith Martin, 1983

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Social Slobs Have No Manners

Children should understand from an early age that notes of thanks should be written when gifts are sent or given to them. It’s heartbreaking when parents who have attempted to instill good manners in their child, or children, watch them ignore what they have been taught. It’s a shame they won’t discover that good manners can open doors and bring a wealth of opportunities into a young person’s life.

The Parents of a Social Slob

Dear Ann Landers: Our experiences in parenthood lead us to believe that whoever wrote "as the twig is bent..." was a bachelor. We have bent a lot of twigs through the years, but eventually they grew in the direction of their choice once the pressure of bending was released.

Being the parents of children who are social slobs is an embarrassment. We know we aren't the only ones, so perhaps this letter will end up on some refrigerator doors and bulletin boards. Here's the message: 

Dear Friends and Relatives: We know that not one of you who sent gifts for our son's 18th birthday and high school graduation has heard from him. We are deeply ashamed but decided not to nag him about it. We feel it is high time he accepted responsibility for his own thank-you notes. 

In the future, please do not feel obligated to send him a gift. Chastise him or continue your generosity as you wish. Also, if he doesn't RSVP to an invitation, invite someone else and notify him the day before the party that his place has been filled. Stop including him. If he doesn't return your calls, replace him with a more responsive friend and companion. 

We have done what we can to teach this young man decent manners, which are nothing more than consideration for others. When HE can't collect postal insurance without the embarrassment of asking if HIS gift arrived, maybe he will get the message. We are, of course, His Parents

Dear Parents: Thanks for a terrific letter. I applaud every word of it and recommend that others who find themselves in your position follow your example. — By Ann Landers, 1983

🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

Hope Chest and Trousseau Etiquette

What is a Trousseau? – According to Engagement and wedding etiquette by Barbara Wilson, “The trousseau can be directly traced back to the barter-price, purchase-price and dowry systems. It was customary for a bride to come to her husband well-provided with a dowry, so that the man might be compensated for his expenses in caring for the children of his wife’s lineage. In our present time in this country, it is not thought essential that a bride bring to her husband money or land, but she is usually provided with a good supply of personal clothing, household linen, silver, china, etc., although much of this also comes along as wedding presents.” Many young women began collecting various items during their teens that they stored in a “hope” or cedar chest over the years. The trousseau may consist of furniture, silver, china, crystal, linens, kitchen equipment, glassware, cosmetics and anything else a young girl might collect over the years. Parents and relatives contributed to the trousseau, as well.

Girls Start Hope Chests Later Now

When I was a young girl, the “hope chest” was started in a girl's early teens, sometimes even before and kept up until her marriage.

Today, however, girls do not start their hope chests at such an early age, if at all. Instead, when their engagements are announced they begin to collect things for their trousseau.

Sometimes these things go into an official “hope chest,” sometimes they are stored in bureau drawers or closets.

In these days of rapidly changing styles, linens, underthings, all the things usual in the bride's trousseau are not collected years in advance. This does not mean that a cedar chest is no longer useful and many a girl has her heart set on one.

Here is a letter on the subject:

“DEAR MISS VANDERBILT: My sister, who is my daughter's godmother, gave my daughter a hope chest three years ago when she was 10. She is now very disappointed that we have not added to the few pieces in it - crochet trimmed pillow cases and things like that. We decided to ask you if it is worth while starting a hope chest for a 13-year-old girl.”

I don't think it would be wise to start a hope chest for a 13-year–old. What your daughter thinks appropriate at that age may be quite out of date by the time she is married.

Not very long ago, for example, colored bed linens were very expensive. Now they may be had on small budgets. Yes, does a 13-year-old know what color bedroom she and her husband-to-be will want, seven or eight years from now? Maybe they'll be living in a trailer! — Amy Vanderbilt, 1955

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of  The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

Different Serving Styles for Dinners

Styles of Serving Meals

Perhaps the best way to give directions for serving a meal is to present a representative menu, and tell how to get it before those who are seated at table. In "Practical Cooking and Serving," mention is made of two distinct styles of serving meals, the English and the Russian, also of a third style, " the compromise," which emphasizes the best points of the other two.

RUSSIAN SERVICE

When a meal is served after the Russian fashion, all the responsibility of supplying food to those at table falls upon the attendants. It follows, then, that, where this fashion is adopted, a full staff of trained household employees is needed, if the wants of those at table are to be properly supplied. Dinner is the meal for which this formal service is best adapted, and even at dinner it should not be carried out

in its entirety unless there be more than one waitress for each eight covers at table, since nothing appears upon the table save the centrepiece (at dinner, a bonbon dish or two is allowable) and the articles that compose the individual covers. All food is served "from the side"; by attendants who pass the food, separated into portions, to the left of those at table, for each to help himself; or, made ready on individual plates, it is set down before each individual from the right.

ENGLISH SERVICE

The English style of service breathes hospitality rather than formality. It allows of personal attention, on the part of those sitting at the head and foot of the table, to the needs of those about them. The food is served "from the table." The meat or fish just as it is taken from the oven or kettle, except for its garnish, is set down before the "head of the house," who carves it and selects the portion desired by each. Place also is found upon the table for one or two vegetables, which are served by some one at the table. Bread and butter, pickles and relishes, are also given a place on the table.But, save relishes, etc…, only one course appears at a time upon the table.

COMPROMISE STYLE OF SERVICE

The compromise style of service is, as its name implies, a "let down" from the formality of the Russian service and a "let up" to the arduous duties expected of the head of the house at a table served after the English fashion. This style of service is largely practised at luncheons and "little dinners," and should be the favorite style, where one has a cook proficient in giving those final touches to a dish that remove it at once from the realm of the commonplace to that of the artistic world. It is also the style of service usually employed in houses where but one or at most two maids are kept. — From “A Guide for Edwardian Servants,” by Janet McKenzie Hill,” 1908

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of  The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

Etiquette of Different Light Wines

 

DEAR MISS VANDERBILT: What exactly is a “light wine?” Are they always white?- From G.F., Dallas, Texas.

Dear G.F., — Light wines have no bubbles, are low in alcohol content (anywhere from 9 per cent to 14 per cent). They may be red, white or rosé. The most popular light French wine is Pouilly Fuisse, a white Burgundy. All of the German Rhine and Moselle wines are light. Rosés, domestic and imported (the Anjou rosé from the Anjou region of France is considered a go-with-everything wine), are especially safe ladies’ choice, served chilled. Rosé should not, in my opinion, be served with strong-flavored foods like curries, which tend to overpower its delicacy.

A light red wine with which you are certainly familiar is sparkling Burgundy which, like rosé, is always served chilled and handled like champagne. Like champagne, it may be served throughout the meal. Many connoisseurs consider the American sparkling Burgundy from good houses superior to those from France.

The very wines that many women consider “light” are not that at all - they are fortified among them are port, Madeira, sherry, angelica. The first three are available in both dry and sweet varieties, the dry suitable as aperitifs with ice, or without ice, but their alcohol content is far higher than that of the light wines. Of course, the highly sugared ones have a higher caloric content. — BY Amy Vanderbilt, 1966

🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

Gilded Age Gastronomical Tidbits

Did you know? These are salad days - lettuce, watercress, dandelion and chive. Take your choice,

These are salad days - lettuce, watercress, dandelion and chive. Take your choice,

The interesting scientific discovery is made that now potatoes will not make hash.

This is the season for dainty desserts - the “airy nothings” that follow the substantial afternoon dinner.

A discussion has been revived as to the health of the vegetarians compared with the habitual meat eating of us.

He who eats ice cream and drinks coffee simultaneously is the kind of man who would rather have pork than filet.

It should be remarked that there is too much cottonseed oil in hotel salads, and a superfluity of lard in restaurant ice cream.

Home prepared corned beef is said to be as different from the butcher's as day is from night. No housekeeper will doubt this assertion.

Every table d'hôte and every restaurant one enters proves there are thousands who have yet to learn it is a gastronomic sin to cut lettuce.

There is some truth to the satirical statement of an exchange that the largest strawberries of every season are found in the illustrated catalogues.

How to eat, after all, is often of more importance than what to eat, especially among people who deny themselves rubber overshoes in order to buy a book on social etiquette.

Your modern epicure is now inclined to elevate his nose at the suggestion of ice cream, and will satirically observe that it is merely “frozen trash” for very young women.

The text of Sir Henry Thompson's gastronomic sermons is that healthiest and most comfortable people in hot weather are those who eat meat but once a day. As before observed, the butchers say Sir Henry is an idiot. — The Times Gazette, 1888

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of  The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

After Luncheon Gilded Age Favorite

Popular in the Gilded Age, by 1908, crème de menthe over ice was still a popular after luncheon drink for women. — At a luncheon party, when coffee is served at the table, creme de menthe is occasionally passed after the guests are seated in the library.

CREME DE MENTHE SERVED IN LIBRARY

At a luncheon party, when coffee is served at the table, creme de menthe is occasionally passed after the guests are seated in the library. Tiny cordial glasses are partially filled with fine-shaved ice and over this is poured a tablespoon full of sugar syrup mixed with creme de menthe cordial. These are set on very small doily-covered plates, an after-dinner coffee spoon beside each glass. The plates are passed, two at a time, on a tray.

In English and compromise style of service the waitress stands at the left of the host or hostess when serving down a plate or taking up a plate or other article prepared for serving.

Wheter the host (or hostess) or the waitress set the plate or cup (coffee or tea) made ready for serving upon the tray is a matter to be decided by each individual host. We are however inclined to think that it should be done by the waitress. When no tray is used the waitress lifts the plate.Why change because a small tray is in one hand? — From “A Guide for Edwardian Servants by Janet McKenzie Hill,” 1908

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of  The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

Egotists and Etiquette

It’s very hard to convince an egocentric through, correction that he should think of others. Clever sign seen in office.

EGOISTS HARD TO CONVINCE

Question: I know a young lady who never says “we” or “ours.” And if speaking to you, she never considers both man and wife. When she mentions her home, she says, “my home.” How can you politely tell someone like this that her husband and friends should be included in a conversation as well as herself?

Answer: It's very hard to convince an egocentric through, correction that he should think of others. Which reminds me of a joke:

A woman complained to her husband that he always referred to everything they mutually owned as his, that the should consider her when speaking of their possessions. The next morning the husband arose, looked agitatedly around the bedroom and said, “Maggie, where are OUR trousers?” 

By Amy Vanderbilt, Etiquette Authority, 1957

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of  The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia