It all started when I saw Footloose.
Though my Christian high school was not so strict that it banned dancing, I must have felt some subconscious spiritual connection to Kevin Bacon’s character. Shortly after watching it, I invited my entire senior class over for a dance party. I wanted to be cool, to party, to shout, “Let’s dance!!!”
As you might guess, absent the charisma of Kevin Bacon, the party left something to be desired. In a desperate attempt to ignite the dance floor, I struck up a vigorous “crisscross” step. But I was too vain, too inexperienced. I rolled my ankle so badly that I missed a month of basketball. I then had to tell my coach and teammates that the culprit was Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.”
Those are the kinds of scars that never heal.
After the Footloose debacle and some rough events in the interim, I thought my problems were solved when I read The 2-Hour Cocktail Party by Nick Gray. It’s basically “Hosting for Dummies,” presenting scripts to invite friends and step-by-step guides to set up a drink table, and the author even gave free consultations. It literally could not be simpler.
Nevertheless, the first time I hosted a party using his method, it bombed. The guide said to offer wine and a self-serve bar, but no one seemed capable of making a drink for themselves. No one wanted to open a bottle of wine, so most people chose to drink sparkling water.
There weren’t enough people, so there were a few distinct conversation circles that you couldn’t leave. You could also sort of hear everybody else in the room, and everyone took turns speaking one at a time. Some guests came, made one lap around the room, and left. We never spoke again. Others had promised they would be there, and I treasured their RSVP only to watch the minutes and then hours go by, slowly realizing they weren’t coming. By the end of the night, I was itching to send everyone home. I wanted to put them out of their misery. Then I wanted to crawl in a hole and die.
This was my first and most important lesson. Hosting is a skill, and with our rampant loneliness epidemic, it takes a lot of effort to put together a successful, well-attended event. Your guests will not kiss your feet for taking on this public health crisis. A lot of hosting discourse almost sounds resentful about this: “Here I am, busting my butt to build community, and these ungrateful guests can’t even be bothered to honor an RSVP!”
While I wouldn’t advocate for creating a village while hating on all the villagers, the way Leah Libresco Sargeant said it to me was helpful: It’s not impossible, but it is hard. So you can either use your energy complaining and exonerating yourself, or you can work to overcome the well-documented impediments to community building. I choose the latter.
The second biggest lesson I learned is that there is no right way to host. Like so much of internet writing, the fringe on both ends is loud, certain, and allergic to nuance. Within the various schools of thought on hosting, the spectrum runs from what I call the “Planners” to the “Chillers.”
The Planners are represented by The 2-Hour Cocktail Party, The Art of Gathering, Building the Benedict Option, and many others. Planners are an articulate, intellectual, conscientious bunch who present a compelling case for how and why to host. This methodical, didactic approach gives them credibility. They’ve thought this stuff through.
Of course, their nuanced books end up dumbed down and radicalized for the algorithms. In my head, the voice of the extreme Planner is shouting something like this: Events need an explicit purpose! Guests need to RSVP ASAP so that subsequent invitees will be impressed with the cool people at your party. Events are for connections! In this room could be your future spouse, your next client, or your new chess partner.
The mentality that undergirds it all: This is serious business! We’re talking about the rebuilding of the infrastructure of the frayed, atomized, post-industrial, post-capitalist, post-Christian society, dang it! This is the village. This is what everyone’s whining about, but you’re doing it, you’re making a difference, you’re not like the rest of those pro-community keyboard warriors. You’re actually doing the work.
This approach pricks the conscience of other would-be Planners. Ask me how I know.
While the planners dominate the conversation, there is a vocal minority of Chillers. They are reacting against the barriers to entry that make hosting seem out of reach for ordinary mortals. You may have heard of “scruffy hospitality,” a concept popularized by the Anglican priest Jack King.
Come as you are, serve simple dishes, and host far more than you would if you were shackled by impossible expectations. Parents of young children do not have spotless homes, and they should not delay hosting until the day their floors are free of dirt and Magna-Tiles.
Chillers and Planners find some overlap on their acknowledgement of the need for third places, “calling culture,” and other social technologies that don’t require constant text messaging and rescheduling to maintain. But Chillers probably wouldn’t actually use terms like social technologies to describe wanting to hang out with friends more.
Of course, Chillers can still end up radical and sanctimonious. The militant Chiller in my head sounds something like this: When I go over to someone’s house and the Cheerios are on the floor and the diapers are piled in the corner and the dinner is spaghetti and meatballs, I’m not offended. I’m honored.
The undergirding mentality: I haven’t showered in three days, I wear John Cena T-shirts around the house, and sometimes, when we’ve run out of milk, I put water in my cereal. And I want to bring you into all of that unfiltered, unedited, unguarded life.
I kid, I kid. But only a little.
For all the talk about wanting “a village,” most Americans are atomized because they prefer it. At least, that’s what they choose when given the option. Suburbs grew out of consumer demand, and a lot of communitarian living of yore was actually an inescapable result of impoverished living conditions. If you wanted community bad enough, you could still find it. But you might have to give up your lawn, your privacy, your autonomy.
As Helen Roy reflects after a year abroad with her family, when your child cries on a bus in Budapest, a babushka materializes out of thin air to soothe the baby. By the same token, when your child isn’t wearing her winter coat, a babushka materializes to scold you. Most Americans have chosen the lawn over the babushka.
While everyone knows that relationships are important generally, it is easy, moment-to-moment, evening after evening, to choose the path of least resistance.
This is a broader trend of life in the digital age that Ross Douthat recently wrote about: “The new era is killing us softly, by drawing people out of the real and into the virtual, distracting us from the activities that sustain ordinary life, and finally making existence at a human scale seem obsolete. In this environment, survival will depend on intentionality and intensity.”
If you are unwilling to fight for more humane ways of relating, they will slip away.
I put no stock in hosts complaining about the flaking, the busyness, and the inconvenience of it all. Not because the complaints aren’t true, but because that’s the whole point. Other people infringe on us and inconvenience us, and so we withdraw, and that’s what got us into this mess in the first place. On a spiritual level, we shouldn’t be surprised that our culture seems to be accelerating in the wrong direction.
As Douthat concludes in that same column, the challenge is not merely to talk, perform, or post about the changes we want. Instead, it’s to “go out into reality and do” because if we are not “deliberate and self-conscious and a little bit fanatical about ensuring that the things [we] love are carried forward,” then they won’t be.
Deliberate, self-conscious, and a little bit fanatical—now that’s a hosting philosophy I could get behind.
While it might sound cliché or even self-aggrandizing, I try to think about hosting as something to offer up to God rather than something grand that I am doing. For my guests, I hope to carve out a very human space in a dehumanizing culture. And for myself, I accept that my ego will take some body blows. It’s not always pleasant, but like any hard experience, there are also moments of joy, growth, and satisfaction at a job well done.
You have to be prudent about what approach best fits your community and temperament, knowing that any strategy will require some ingenuity and grit. Going against the grain guarantees some resistance. While some throw up their hands in frustration, I see those challenges as a sign that I’m on the right track.
If you want greatness, you must struggle.
If you want a village, you must embrace the villagers.
If you want a dance party, you’ve gotta break some ankles.
Ben Christenson is a writer and editor who has written for Hearth & Field, Front Porch Republic, Mere Orthodoxy, and others. He writes while his (amazing) wife watches their three kids, three dogs, one cat, and innumerable chickens. You can read more of his work at benjaminchristenson.com.
