White House Smoking Etiquette

A place setting from the Lyndon Johnson Presidential Administration (1963 — 1969) complete with the required ashtrays, White House matches and holders of cigarettes flanking the floral arrangement.  — At State Dinners and home dinners, smoking at meals was so commonplace, the 1940’s Sunset “Host and Hostess” book on entertaining cautioned that for a properly set dining table, each place setting needed an ashtray, no less than 3 cigarettes, and matches or a lighter. It wasn’t until the Clinton administration, that smoking was banned in the White House at the dining tables.

Smoke When They Please, Hang The Protocol at the White House

Washington (UPI) 

Backstairs at the White House: Be it a sign of less respect for strictly formal etiquette or the informality of the ‘New Frontier,’ but guests at White House State Dinners these days— some guests, at least— seem to smoke when they please and hang the protocol. It once was rigid custom that guests smoked only late in the dinner, certainly not until after the entree, and to be completely safe, not until the champagne was served before dessert. 

In the Truman administration, for example, smoking at formal dinners was controlled rather simply — no ash trays. When the time came for smoking, waiters placed ash trays along the glittering banquet tables. At one of the first Truman dinners, the wife of a new cabinet officer lit up right after the soup and discovered, to her horror, there was no place for ashes except the hallowed, historic dinner china or the floor. A stern butler let her collect ashes in her hand for a few minutes, then marched up disdainfully and relieved her of the smoldering butt. 

The Eisenhowers put ash trays on the table, with small dishes of cigarettes, but since neither the President nor his wife smoked, it was hard to watch them for guidance. Occasionally, late in a dinner, either the former President or his wife Mamie, would tell those nearest them to smoke if they wished. At some of the more recent functions given for visiting heads of state by President and Mrs. Kennedy, however, several guests started smoking early in the proceedings. 

At the recent dinner for Sudan President Ibrahim Abboud, several guests lighted cigarettes moments after they were seated, even before the dinner actually began. They apparently spotted raised eyebrows and doused the cigarettes quickly. The President does not smoke at the table. He lights up when he goes into the adjoining red, green, or blue rooms for coffee and liqueurs after dinner. 

The more valorous protocol would indicate no smoking until a host or hostess gives some indication, but it may be that with a growing climate of informality not only in Washington, but other gathering places of prominent people, the sin of smoking before the entree is becoming less heinous. The Kennedy’s, early in their White House career, stopped the long established custom of splitting the men and women into carefully segregated groups after dinner for brandy and cigars in one room, creme de menthe, frappe and cigarets in the other.— By Merriman Smith, White House Reporter, 1961

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia Etiquette Encyclopedia

Emily Post on Candles and Smokers

One of the better known writers on manners, with her first book of etiquette published in 1922, is Emily Post. Though she died in 1960, her extended family (most notably her late-granddaughter in-law, Elizabeth Post) has successfully continued on with her legacy of  nearly a century of etiquette books, news columns and social media contributions. – Above, “Emily Post” by Miguel Covarrubias for Vanity Fair, December 1933 
– Image source, Pinterest 

From “Good Taste Today” 

Dear Mrs. Post: Will you please tell me, first if it is proper to use unlighted candles (in candelabra) on the buffet merely as decoration? Second, if it is proper to use them then, should the candles be new or should they be lighted and snuffed out, leaving chaired ends?  

Answer: If by a buffet you mean a sideboard, candelabra are suitable decoration. There is no rule about burning off the candles, but if you did this the candelabra would at least look as though they were sometimes used on the dining table and merely stood on the sideboard between while. Candles are, of course, always put on an evening buffet table and lighted beforehand unless in summer when the evening meal begins in daylight.  

Dear Mrs. Post: How can I be courteous about letting visitors in my house know that I do not like cigaret smoke? Any one using strong perfume is supposed to be showing very bad taste, and yet cigaret smoke smells equally strong, to say nothing of smoke-drenched clothes worn by the inveterate smokers. When I have to spend a day or evening with smokers, I am completely seasick. 

Answer: If people you care very little about are the smokers, the solution is simple enough since you need not continue inviting them to your house. If, however, all the people you like best smoke, you will, I am afraid, have to accustom yourself to smoke or resign yourself to loneliness. On the other hand, I think it only fair to mention that your friends should in their turn show reasonable consideration for you. 

Every smoker should realize that smoking at a dining table, which has not been furnished with ash trays and cigarets, is a breach of etiquette. After the meal, of course, the question of courtesy goes into reverse and those who dislike smoke are unhappily for themselves expected to tolerate it. One thing that might help you, if you have not already discovered it, is to remove the dead ends constantly from the ash trays or better still, get especial ash receivers with water compartments beneath trap tops which prevent that stale smell, which is more than likely the cause of your feeling of seasickness. —Emily Post, 1939

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia©️ Etiquette Encyclopedia

Women’s Etiquette and Smoking

In foreign countries where women have always smoked openly, one may do as one pleases about using tobacco. Smoking is fashionable, therefore inconspicuous. In America, it has always been associated with women whose existence refined families refuse to recognize, so the woman who permits the public to see her while indulging in the doubtful habit, is not spared censure and loss of respect, even with wealth and name at her back. The world is getting used to black sheep from respectable folds.

We have accepted many innovations, but I doubt if the men of our families ever permit us to indulge the habit of smoking in public. There is a host of women who take a cigarette with husband or brother, but they are generally too discreet, too careful of appearances to lay themselves open to criticism on a matter that savors of the halfworld. Appearance we must observe, my friends. We must conform to the customs of the place in which we live, if they represent decency. In foreign countries where women have always smoked openly, one may do as one pleases about using tobacco. Smoking is fashionable, therefore inconspicuous. In America, it has always been associated with women whose existence refined families refuse to recognize, so the woman who permits the public to see her while indulging in the doubtful habit, is not spared censure and loss of respect, even with wealth and name at her back. The world is getting used to black sheep from respectable folds.

The daughter of a family in a small and rather straight-laced city went to a large city to earn her living. Her brother had preceded her, and both broadened rapidly in the unfamiliar atmosphere. They were so accustomed to dining at hotels that the difference between the unwritten laws of etiquette in home and large cities escaped their memory. The brother had been away from home so long as to he almost forgotten, and when he and his sister paid a visit to their home he was not recognized on the evening he escorted his sister to the dining-room of the principal hotel in the place. But she was, and it required just twentyfour hours for the news to reach the ears of the mother, who was quite as shocked as anybody in the city. 

She had been called away to a sick relation and expected the pair to eat dinner at home. They saw the chance for a bit of pleasure elsewhere, and took it without a thought of the manner in which the act would be looked upon. Only strangers could dine at that, or any hotel there unnoticed, and the fact that the man was taken for a stranger made it look worse for his sister. Both made light of the matter, as might be expected, but they never repeated the experiment through fear of public opinion which, after all has weight. I presume there are women who enjoy being conspicuous— I judge so from things they do —but the great majority prefer to keep on the side of good taste —and good sense. Smoking taints the breath and discolors the teeth —some physicians declare that it injures health —but if women want to take all these risks, and the men nearest them do not object, there is really nothing to he done save to appeal to them to spare the feelings of the public. –Betty Bradeen, 1909

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

1930's Smoking Etiquette

If people you care very little about are the smokers, the solution is simple enough, since you need not continue inviting them to your house. — Emily Post

Dear Mrs. Post: How can I be courteous about letting visitors in my house know that I do not like cigarette smoke? Any one using strong perfume is supposed to be showing very bad taste, and yet cigarette smoke smells equally strong, to say nothing of smoke-drenched clothes worn by the inveterate smokers. When I have to spend a day or evening with smokers, I am completely seasick.


Answer: If people you care very little about are the smokers, the solution is simple enough since you need not continue inviting them to your house. If, however, all the people you like best smoke, you will, I am afraid, have to accustom yourself to smoke or resign yourself to loneliness. On the other hand, I think it only fair to mention that your friends should in their turn, show reasonable consideration for you. Every smoker should realize that smoking at a dining table, which has not been furnished with ash trays and cigarettes, is a breach of etiquette. After the meal, of course, the question of courtesy goes into reverse and those who dislike smoke are unhappily for themselves expected to tolerate it. One thing that might help you if you have not already discovered it, is to remove the dead ends constantly from the ash trays or better still, get especial ash receivers with water compartments beneath trap tops which prevent that stale smell which is more than likely the cause of your feeling of seasickness. – San Bernardino Sun, 1939

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

19th C. Global Cigarette Etiquette

The idea is that it is more courteous to allow a comrade the greater length of time. If he is handed the match first he naturally hurries in order to hand it back again. 

There is a fashion even in so small a thing as the lighting of a cigarette. In Cuba it is customary among gentlemen for one to place the cigarette between his lips, light it, take a few puffs and then hand it to his friend. In Spain the same fashion prevails. An Austrian is very punctilious about the etiquette of cigar lighting. He lights his cigarette first and then hands the lighted match to his companion. The idea is that it is more courteous to allow a comrade the greater length of time. If he is handed the match first he naturally hurries in order to hand it back again. 

A Frenchman always hands his companion the match first. An Englishman proffers the cigarette to his friend, lights a match, hands it to him, and then helps himself to another cigarette and match. An American usually hands his friend a lighted match and takes a light from his cigarette afterward. The small boy gets a light wherever he can, generally from some passer-by on the street. The habit of stopping men on the street to ask for a light is looked upon as ill-bred in all countries. In no country is it tolerated to such an extent as in the United States. — The New York Mail and Express, 1887

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia