A Thanksgiving Etiquette

It’s going to be a wild and woolly Thanksgiving. Thirty-some people. Shoes stacked  at the door. Coats piled on the study desk. Babies in highchairs. Nonagenarians with canes. Bleary-eyed college kids with papers due despite the holiday. And a general buzz of overlapping conversations.

And just at this moment, my mom gives me a book—The Complete Book of Etiquette by Amy Vanderbilt. It’s an old book. And well worn. When I was a kid. I read it as I ate my breakfast toast. And as I rocked a little brother to sleep. And when I went to bed at night.

Vanderbilt took me to a different world—away from balled-up socks on the living floor and everlasting racks of dishes to dry, and bathrooms where someone, once again, forgot to flush.

She took me to fine living—where people changed for dinner and ate in courses and the hostesses “turned the table” by ending a conversation with the guest on her right and beginning one with the guest on her left. I learned where to place the salad fork and the seafood fork and the meat fork. And the soup spoon and ice-tea spoon.

The book covered how to interview servants and introduce them to the household and manage their work. But I doubted, somehow, that I’d ever have servants to manage. So my favorite chapter was “Gracious Living Without Servants.”

Use all the new appliances, Vanderbilt advised such unfortunate readers in her 1951 book. And work ahead to avoid hurry and tension. She even offered menus for maid-less meals. In such a luckless life, there was still hope.

When did I stop dreaming of china and goblets and touching a bell for service?

I can’t say. But I can tell you that in a few days I’ll set a stack of 30-some plain white Corelle dinner plates at the beginning of a buffet where guests will serve themselves turkey from crockpots and dressing and vegetables from baking dishes.

This doesn’t mean I’ve stopped dreaming. My holiday visions now are of a ninety-seven-year-old great-grandma talking with my 17-year-old grandson, of a hug someone gives a sister in cancer treatment, of young treble voices and old tremulous voices and all the voices in between singing “I Thank the Lord my Maker for All his Gifts to Me.”