Life Kit - How to host a meaningful holiday gathering

Episode Date: December 14, 2021

Hosting family and friends during the holidays can be stressful, but it doesn't need to be. Conflict resolution facilitator Priya Parker discusses ways anyone can host a meaningful, memorable gathering. (This episode originally aired in July 2021.)Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

My name is Maya Chupkov. I've been listening to LifeKits since the beginning of the pandemic. That's when I really started getting into podcasts. Two episodes, Flip My World Upside Down, Making a Side Gig Work for You, and Five Practices to Become a Better Listener. And not only was the content amazing and helpful, but the people you invited on to talk about these issues were verbally diverse people. It really changed my perspective of who can be on a podcast. And it really just made me realize that my own speech impediment was holding me back. And listening to these two episodes really helped me find my own voice. I'm Maya, and this is Proud Stutter, a podcast exploring what it means to be verbally diverse.

After listening to those two episodes, I realized that I too can become an audio storyteller, and I've been wanting to start a podcast for so long. I'm so appreciative of LifeKit's commitment to diversity and inclusion. LifeKit brings you advice from all sorts of experts, voices you may not be used to hearing, but have expertise to share nevertheless. LifeKit is here to make a real impact in your life. Our journalists and guests work hard to demystify topics that seem scary or complicated,

and we can't do that without you. Our show relies on listener support from our audience all over the country. When you donate to your local public radio station, you help bring more voices to our airwaves and your headphones. Go to donate.npr.org slash life kit to get started with your donation. And thanks. This is NPR's Life Kit. I'm Deepa Mottesham. When hosting a gathering, you have to think about a lot. Cleaning the house, buying enough food, getting a playlist together.

And while that's all important, it's kind of a distraction from why you're gathering in the first place. We spend too much thinking about how to create this incredible food and then think, oh, I can't do that. So I can't host. If you are like that, you can still absolutely host and host in amazing ways where the meaning comes through how you connect people, through the conversations that you have, through the questions that you ask. That's Priya Parker. She's the author of The Art of Gathering. This is a deeply democratic, accessible practice because I believe anyone can host. You don't need a fancy house. You don't need a lot of money. You don't need to be raised in a specific way. You need to want to bring people together for a need that you have and treat them well. And on this episode, we're talking about how to host in a more intentional way,

starting with someone very close to me who's hosted quite a lot. Iranians always find a good excuse to get together. My mom. My name is Pantea Motashan. Stick around. Salam! Salam! How are you? How are you? In general, I think the Middle Eastern culture has a very hospitable and warm welcoming to their guests.

Perfect, let's go inside. Giving a very warm welcome to your guest, it's very important in our culture. Usually a lot of hugs, if the guest has brought a present, there's of course always

saying, oh, you shouldn't have bothered. Oh my God, this looks so delicious. Thank you so much. Of course. Come on in. Thank you so much. Of course. Come on in. Thank you. You welcome your guests in and as soon as they sit, you ask them what they like to drink. What can I get you? Red wine, white wine or rosé?

Because they have taken the time to travel to your home. Enjoy. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. As a host, again, you know, it's important that the food is served at the right time so it's not spoiled or it's not cold and everybody is ready to have dinner. Everything was so delicious. Bon appetit

Enjoy If everybody lives with a lot of smile on their face And you can tell That means your party was successful For me that's all that matters And at the end you make sure you always And I make sure everybody goes home with whatever left over is Exactly

Take home Exactly Because there is always a lot of extra, extra food If you have 10 guests, there is usually food for 20 people That's true The whole point is for a guest and a host to have a memorable time. It's about memory. Gathering is about memory.

And the sign of a great host is when your guests leave remembering how good of a time they had. You know, so you wake up the next morning after like a particularly beautiful evening with friends. And I don't know if you're like me, it's like your heart is full. Priya's top tip, figure out your purpose or need first. Whether that's connecting with old friends, trying out new dishes, or leaving everything behind through a solid dance party. Get clear about that and the rest will follow. Gatherings could mean anything from your typical dinner party to a block party or baby shower. But in your research, would you say there are some universal standard principles to being a good host? The role of the host, particularly in a group, is incredibly important.

You know, when you are meeting with one other person, at some level, there's an element of peers. I mean, you can kind of host one person and they can host you at some, but you're still creating something together. In a group, when you're bringing people together, the role of the host is really to connect the group to each other, to connect them to the purpose or the intention, to protect them from each other. You know, if you're bringing together a group of people and one person's kind of taking all of the airtime or one person tends to be dominating the conversation,

whatever it is, it's the role of the host to really equalize the group. It's responsibility. It's also a lot of fun, or it can be, but the role of the host is really to take care of the life of the group. When you say equalize, can you elaborate on what that means a little bit? We each have many different identities ourselves, right? So I'm a biracial person. I'm a woman. I'm a ex-softball player. I'm a facilitator. I'm a mother. And that is true of each person who comes to any type of gathering. But in a group, it's your job as a host to figure out what and how to make everybody there feel like they belong. Very simply, it could be at a wedding or at, birthday party. If you are having a dance party, how do you make it as comfortable for the person who wouldn't normally

dance to dance or the person who has less access to be able to dance in traditional ways to come and feel included? Like in every time any group is getting together, there needs to be a context that's set up so that each person, regardless of their many identities, can find a way in. So part of the work of hosting starts before the event itself, right? You know, determining what this gathering is about. And I want to talk a little bit about your first principle, giving gathering a purpose. Does every gathering need to have a deeper, specific purpose? Maybe I just want to hang out with friends without there being a reason. If you have a great group of friends that it's like you're completely enjoying every single time you're spending with them, however that is, however that feels, like keep doing that. This is really about how

to create more meaningful interaction, assuming that that's what you want. And so a purpose need not be serious. A better word for purpose may actually be need or reason, like what's the need of this group right now? The biggest mistake we make when we gather is that we assume that the purpose is shared and obvious. You're not taking any joy out of it. You're not making it serious, right? You're simply adding an intention that begins to actually shape the night, but also shapes the group. Yeah, like determining the purpose actually determines a lot of the practical logistics

that go into hosting too, it seems. Absolutely. Like the purpose is not like a lofty goal. It's a decision-making filter. So often, because we haven't paused to think about what is it that I need or what is it that we need, we back into gatherings that tend to be vague and slightly dull. And specificity is a very powerful source of meaning and connection for people. Okay, so you've determined the purpose. What else does the host need to keep in mind in preparation in order to make the gathering successful before the event itself? So group size really matters. Four to six, but six is a wonderful size for like a really connected

conversation. It's hard to carry dead weight. So if like one person's checked out or two people are kind of checked out or on their phones, like everyone else really feels it. And it's hard to get the group to kind of like take lift. Eight to 12 is a great size for kind of like a buzzy dinner party. It's very likely that the conversation would break off into pairs of two or three, like you're much more likely to have small group conversations than one big one, unless it's kind of facilitated or somebody is really if people are really kind of primed to to focus on the full group, you can absolutely have a lively big conversation with eight to 12 people. 20 to 30 feels you know, more like a party. And the last thing I'll just say about size is it's not just

that these different sizes are good for different groups and different reasons. They fundamentally affect people's behavior. So if I come into a room, and this is true for almost anybody, what I choose to say in a group isn't dictated by the person in the room with whom I feel most comfortable. It's what I'm willing to say in front by the person in the room with whom I feel most comfortable. It's what I'm willing to say in front of the person who I feel least comfortable. Right? And so the composition of the group, the dynamics of the group will give you different evenings. And so again, it's not bad.

It's not good. It's just saying that each of these elements are choices that determine the shape of an experience. There's an actual science to it too. And absolutely. I love that. You mentioned the guest list earlier. And I feel like as a host, there's so much anxiety involved with planning gathering, like, especially when it comes to the guest list, like who to invite and who not to, is this person going to be offended if I don't invite them as a host and a planner? How do you determine that? Like, what are some things to consider? First of all, I think there's different pressure for if you're hosting quite often. And so if people kind of know, it's kind of like game theory. Like if you, if you're hosting quite

often, it's not that big of a deal. If you're not, if like, if you're cycling through different circles of friends or, you know, peer groups, um, if it's like a wedding, right. If it's a once in a lifetime event or, uh, you know, maybe once in a lifetime event, then it starts, the stakes start getting much higher for your, for the community as to who's invited and who's not. So I would just say that as like an opening, which is if you're worried about excluding, host more, not less, because it actually lowers the stakes of like who you're inviting each time. When you have a purpose, it allows you to then back into why you're excluding somebody. If it's kind of a vague party and you haven't invited some people and they're like, why did you invite me? It's kind of like, you know, well, and then you can kind of, you can blame it on, well, it was the capacity of the room, but purpose in a different way, if you don't have those external

factors allows for that. So for example, I had a friend who has had a reunion. He used to be in the Peace Corps and casually, informally, a group of friends wanted to get together for a Peace Corps reunion. And one of them on an email or WhatsApp thread was like, great, our partner's invited. And that's the moment when a good gatherer pauses. And instead of saying the knee jerk, yeah, of course, pause and says, well, it depends. Why are we doing this? What's the need here? We haven't seen each other in a decade. Are we wanting to reconnect with just ourselves and kind of catch up on old stories, which

is one purpose, or are we wanting to reconnect and bring our, like the life that we've built since that moment, in which case absolutely bring partners. But this knee jerk, like, of course, the more the merrier, while it, it seems like a spirit of generosity, we kind of bulldoze through the intention of a group. And so when you have a purpose, and then you can explain to the partners, actually, this is just volunteers first time, and then we're going to do one with families. So all of this is say is like, it's because we don't pause and just ask this very simple question ahead of time. What is the need? What do we want the need to be? We end up backing into it in the room where it is just a lot more messy. For this episode, I actually spoke with my mom.

I'm Iranian and hospitality is very much at the heart of our culture. And the meaning of hosting was basically ingrained in me at a young age, you know, the idea that the most important thing to hosting is making sure that the guest feels at home at all costs, you know, and sometimes that can be taken to extremes. But can we talk a bit about cultural backgrounds and how they may play into or inform different styles of hosting? You know, I'm half Indian, and in Hindi, there's a phrase that is probably, you probably have the equivalent in Farsi, which is, mehman bagvanhe, which means literally guest is God. Yeah, in Persian, mehman is actually the word for guest, and mehmani means gathering or party. Wow.

And there are a lot of cultures where the collective, where group life is frankly, to put it like very simply, more important than the life of the individual. And there are great hosting traditions from those contexts, and the individual can be suppressed. And the way I look at it is the United States, America, the pendulum has swung the other way. It's a very individualistic society where there are pangs and desire for more of a collective and more of a whole. And the US in and of itself is made up of many cultures and many races. And many of us are biracial or multiracial ourselves, right? We're mixed even internally. And I think that we have a fascinating opportunity to basically really create gatherings where the individual is respected, and the group is respected. And that,

to me, is the core essence of gathering well. Right. And part of that is setting expectations beforehand. So you're not feeling as a host, as a host as a host like okay i'm doing all this work and people are coming and leaving without contributing at all completely so you start gathering at the moment that the guest discovers this future event right i call it the moment of discovery and so as a host to send out the invitation whatever that is whether it's a text message whether it's an email to give it, give your gathering a name, right? It could be, um, Priya's like teenage softball snack nostalgia party, right? I'm making this up. Right. Like Priya. And it's like, I played softball for like eight years. I miss it deeply. My favorite snack

at I, you know, it was in Vienna, Virginia, on some game days, the Vienna Inn would bring and cater or like some dad or mom would go over and get everyone chili dogs. I love them. It's like my favorite snack. I know you may not be you may not eat meat, you may not do this, you may not, but like, I'm gonna come and I going to make chili dogs and serve Coke. Or if you want to have people bring, what was your nostalgia food, right? As a teenager or as a kid. Bring enough to share with six other people, right? But I'm guiding them through the invitation well ahead.

I'm not trying to convince them to eat a hot dog the second they come into the door and be like, where's all the other food? Because we all come in with lots of expectations. It's not a bad thing, but we have different cultural expectations. We have different economic expectations. And so the role of this invitation is like this psychological contract to help people understand this temporary world you're building and you're inviting them into for a specific moment in time. And then they can choose whether they want to come to this hot dog party or just sit this one out. And either is fine. But otherwise, we try to kind of like do all of this in the room and people don't understand why people are feeling controlled or upset. And it's because we've actually under-hosted before anyone arrives. And then you're trying to like make this thing happen that

no one knows is in your head. Right. But there should be a balance, right? Ultimately, you want the host to be able to enjoy themselves too. I mean, I think the host should deeply enjoy themselves. And I personally, and from talking to readers and people, this is a much more enjoyable way of doing this than wondering if people are judging you because of the, you know, doily you put on your table. Well, thank you so much, Priya, for being here and making the time. Thank you so much for having me and for asking these questions. I really appreciate it. hi this is stephanie page from columbus ohio hi my name is jacob finkelman and i live in new orleans with five roommates and two dogs hi mpr My name is David.

I love hosting and the feeling of creating a super warm and friendly space for my friends. One, create a custom playlist for the event. I have learned to task others with something to pitch in. And two, create a signature cocktail for the event. I do like to have a theme when I have a party. I tend to have favorite dishes specific to the weather, so gazpacho in the summer or lamb shanks in the winter. I've found that when I have people over, oftentimes we end up playing some form of a game. In the words of Joy Hodge, perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite. All right. Cheers to a great party. Thank you.

Thank you to everyone who wrote in. We loved hearing about the ways you host. Just a reminder, if you love and appreciate Life Kit, go to donate.npr.org slash Life Kit to get started with your donation. Again, that's donate.npr.org slash Life Kit. For more episodes of Life Kit, go to npr.org slash life kit. We have episodes on all sorts of topics. We have one on how to recreate family recipes and another on how to cut back on necessary spending. This episode was produced by Clamory Schneider and specialain is the managing producer and Beth Donovan is our senior editor. I'm Deba Motasham. Thanks for listening.