The Rituals of Dinner

by Visser, Margaret

  A guest must appear at the host’s door—especially when the occasion is dinner—looking as clean and respectable as possible. A dirty guest, unscented and unkempt, shows great dishonour to the host in the United Arab Emirates. Her hostess might show her understanding of the slight by neglecting to offer food and perfumes in turn; she can count only on coffee, the least a host can offer. Guests are expected to bath carefully, to put on cosmetics and perfumes (if women), and come in their best clothes. Again the expectation has not changed in traditional society for two thousand years: in the New Testament, a man who comes to a wedding “without a wedding garment” enrages the king because it shows a lack of preparedness, an uncaring attitude, and even calculated disrespect. (This parable is inserted, in Matthew’s text but not in Luke’s, directly after the wedding feast is offered to people who have been hurriedly gathered in from the streets because the original guests had turned their host’s invitation down. The story of the guest who had not bothered to dress for the occasion clearly belongs in a different place in the text.) Plato has Socrates, who normally went barefooted, appear at a friend’s house for dinner noticeably having bathed, and wearing sandals.

  At dinner parties the public and the private realms intersect; this meeting of two separate categories is one reason for the social and ritual importance of inviting guests for a meal. But even family meals are turned into mini-“feasts” if they are held at set times, if all the family is expected to attend, and if eating between meals is regulated. This is why festive dressing for dinner—even for family dinners—has been a common response to an eating event the world over. Cleanliness and purity always accompany the idea of eating, so clothes must be clean—and not sullied during the meal. Wearing clothes is a social act, and (except for protection and warmth, neither of which is usually very necessary at dinner) has nothing to do with “nature” or common sense. Clothes are an overlaying of the physical, like table manners themselves. They bow to social agreements (for example, in following fashion); they adorn their wearers and enhance their appearance, just as laying a table or decorating a dish helps make the meal aesthetically pleasing.

  In many cultures there are clothes designed only for eating, just as we have special outfits to sleep in. Like nightdresses, dinner garments, in societies which allow their members this comfort, must always be loose. (Our “dinner jacket” is dressy, but not made especially roomy because of the occasions on which it is worn.) The Japanese Tea Ceremony often includes a time when guests are left alone to admire the beauty of the host’s arrangement of the room; during this interval he changes into a special tea-drinking robe, and reappears to give the guests a new view of their host. In ancient Rome, guests changed into a tunic and shawl for dinner. These were colourful and becoming garments, either thin in summer or woollen in winter. In imperial times the outfit, called a synthesis or “combination,” was considered rather effeminate because it had once been female apparel only. It was never worn out of doors, except during the Saturnalia, when as much behaviour as possible was deliberately reversed. The emperor Nero once caused a scandal by being seen outside with only half a synthesis on, and a silly-looking handkerchief tied round his neck.

  Roman guests were given thin slippers to put on in their host’s house, but these too were removed by the slaves before the meal proper began. If a guest “called for his slippers,” it was a sign that he wanted to leave the dining room, change into his street clothes, and then go home. It was considered very chic to come with several changes of synthesis to wear during one meal. Martial describes a fop who changed eleven times, complaining of heat and perspiration. The poet sourly remarks that owning only one synthesis seems to prevent sweat.

  In ancient China, the togetherness signified by a banquet was sometimes underlined by all the diners appearing in the same colour, rather as members of a choir must all dress alike or at least in matching colours. We sometimes hand out similar decorations to all the diners, for the sake of hilarity or to promote a sense of community and occasion, as when the men all wear red carnations and the women corsages, or when everyone puts on a paper party hat. But normally it was the servants (now it is the waiters in expensive restaurants) who have been dressed alike in our culture. They often wore white gloves so that their fingers could not come in contact with the food; in addition, any touching of the sauce would immediately show, and could not be licked away.

  In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, women had to bare their shoulders in order to eat at formal dinners. They also had to put on long gloves, only to remove them before the meal began. Buttoned, elbow-length gloves could be so hard to get off that one could buy a pair with hands that rolled back. The etiquette manuals were never very sure whether they approved of this labour-saving device; Emily Post pronounced it “hideous.” Gloves, once removed, had to join evening bag, fan, and large damask napkin, all precariously balanced on a slippery, possibly satin-sheathed, lap. Emily Post suggested rather daringly (“this ought not to be put into a book of etiquette, which should say you must do nothing of the kind”) that one might cover all these objects with the napkin placed cornerwise across the knees “and tuck the two side corners under like a lap robe, with the gloves and the fan tied in place, as it were.” She went further, since one could no longer count on receiving a very large napkin, and promoted the carrying of paper clips, by gentlemen as well as ladies, to hold the napkin in place. All this assumes that a civilized diner would never require any dabbing at the lips with a napkin during dinner.

  Until quite recently women kept their hats on in restaurants and when invited to a formal lunch. Liselotte, a French arbiter of etiquette, says in 1915 that women may keep their hats on even if the lunch is not very ceremonious “so as not to derange the edifice of their hair,” and so that they can leave after the meal without having to recreate their toilette. But a hostess, who had not had to go out, could remain hatless, even at formal functions. It has usually been the case that hosts, because they are at home and also because they are ritually more powerful, could wear less formal clothes than guests. A hostess never wore gloves or a face veil in her own home, “unless,” Emily Post added jocularly but rather brutally in 1922, “there is something the matter with her face.” Guests wearing face veils were allowed to fasten the lower edge “up over their noses.” Women in the United Arab Emirates, eating with their hands, delicately lift their black masks (which they wear even at all-female dinner parties) with one finger each time they take a mouthful. When Western women wore huge fruit-laden hats, the table decorations greatly resembled the headgear; old photographs of turn-of-the-century lunches remind us that the ensemble must have been impressive.

  In ancient Greece and Rome, a banquet was simply no banquet unless everybody present wore a wreath. The purpose of crowns was partly like that of paper party hats: they signified festivity. The scent of the plaited flowers and vegetation was said to prevent drunkenness too early in the symposium. Another meaning was erotic, since dinner wreaths denoted passionate excitement. The religious significance was deeply solemn. Wearing the wreath symbolized completeness and integrity (a broken wreath, from an erotic point of view, signified a personality enthralled by eros, his inviolability broken). Fate in the ancient world was thought of as a bond, and the wreath bound round the head meant human limitation in general: the necessity which all of us share, and which includes the need to eat. The crown was a pledge that one would observe the cardinal rule of table manners, not to be guilty of appropriating the food due to other people; stealing, and ignoring the rights of others, was a form of hybris or disregard for limitation.

  Wreaths went with perfumed oils. Both were put on at the same time, at the beginning of the feast (this would be the second perfuming, if the host had anointed the guest’s head on arrival), or before the second “table” or course, and after the meal before the symposium. Roman cities had wreath and perfume shops, at which prospective hosts could get supplies ready-made, or where party-goers could buy the
ir headgear and perfumes on their way to the host’s house. Modern Western people have largely replaced the arts of perfumery with constant washing and a determination to do away with all bodily odours. A modern rule at gourmet dinners is that anyone who wears perfume on such an occasion has no idea how to behave—perfume fights the bouquet of the wine. But for much of history, scent was thought essential to festivity (partly but by no means entirely because crowds of people quickly smell rank), and incense and perfume were especially appreciated at dinner. Ancient Egyptian frescoes show us dinner guests with large cones of scented fat fixed to the tops of their heads; these were designed to melt during the feast, and drizzle deliciously down over the diners’ faces and bodies.

  When the guests arrive, the hosts must be ready, impeccably dressed and calmly waiting, all preparatory struggles over. A host is responsible for a guest within the boundary of his or her domain. For this reason, if the boundary of the house is felt to be the gate to the whole property, the host may await the guests there and conduct them across the grounds and into the house; he will similarly “see them off” at the end of the visit, as far as the front door or to the property’s gates, and might even travel part of the way home with a guest of honour.

  Guests must know when to arrive—exactly at the time mentioned when they were invited, or later. (Hosts rarely welcome guests who arrive earlier than the stated time.) Punctuality is extremely culture-specific; the correct time of arrival for dinner is partly a function of the type and temperature of the food served. Western European cuisine demands to be eaten hot, and many of the dishes require to be what the French call à point, cooked to a certain point, no more and no less. We rarely chop food in advance, as the Chinese do, and stir-fry it moments before serving. Our etiquette books accordingly used to insist that hosts should not wait longer than a quarter of an hour at the most, after the first course is ready, for tardy arrivals; guests were warned of the fury they could cause by coming late for dinner. Other cultures have other ideas. Traditional Japanese expected guests to come one hour late; modern Greeks (who dislike very hot food) would be shocked if you arrived less than half an hour after the stated time. Respect for and submission to the host’s expectations is common to both systems: a polite guest should adapt either to the nature of the meal and the trouble that has been taken with it, by coming on time, or to the host’s privacy and a culture’s general distaste for hurrying, by coming late.

  Punctuality has a lot to do with another cultural particularity: the nature and length of pre-dinner socializing. We ourselves expect guests to contain their appetites for some time before dinner is ready; we keep them busy with tidbits, conversation, and pre-dinner “drinks.” No matter how slow the hosts are about giving us something solid to eat, we as guests must never ever complain, or even look as though we are aware of the delay. In some northern European societies, as most of us used to do in the past, guests arrive and everyone sits down at once to dinner, so it is essential to be on time. In many non-European cultures socializing takes place first, but talking is kept to a strict minimum while eating, and people might be expected to leave straight after the meal, so that it would be extremely rude to arrive just before dinner, skipping all the conversation beforehand. It would look as though you were breaking a fundamental rule of all dinnertime politeness, which decrees that guests will not come for the food alone.

  There might be a ceremony that takes place before the meal begins, establishing in advance the companionship which is essential for eating together. One example is the almost sacramental sharing of a cola nut in Nigeria. The cola (which provides the name for a type of Western pop drink, the formula for which might or might not contain a minute quantity of cola) is a large nut with several bitter-tasting cotelydons, full of the stimulants caffeine, theobromine (as in chocolate), and kolanine. An Igbo host, after greeting his guests, must share with them a cola nut; on even the most informal occasions he will apologize profusely if he is caught without one to offer. After a prayer, one nut is split by the oldest or most honoured person at the gathering, and tiny pieces are eaten by all present. “During the sharing,” writes O. Nzekwu, “a religious feeling pervades the atmosphere. All talking stops.” The Yoruba tribe makes cola part of the ritual of ending, rather than opening, a meal: cola nuts are presented to departing guests. To be given an odd number of nuts is an insult and lets you know that, although careful manners may have prevailed during dinner, the host is angry with you for some reason. An even number of nuts is offered to signify the desire of the host for a closer relationship with his guest, and the larger the (even) number of nuts the greater his esteem.

  In France, guests are often expected to meet for an apéritif before dinner. This institution grows out of the nineteenth-century French custom of a coup d’avant or “shot before,” a small glass of vermouth given before dinner, at first only to the men. The French word vermouth is related to English “wormwood” (a corruption of German Wermut), an ingredient of absinthe. Wermut meant “man courage”: the substance is thought to be a powerful aphrodisiac. Vermouth, made by mixing white wine with “Turin bitters,” derived from plants like artemisia and bitter oranges, was invented by the Italian Alessio during the eighteenth century and put on sale commercially in Turin in 1786. The French met vermouth on Napoleon’s forays into Italy. They joined in the gradual change from an ancient taste for spiced and honeyed wines before dinner to a new love for bitters. New drinks often become popular because people persuade themselves that they are somehow good for the health. The noun apéritif (“opener”) appears only in 1888; the adjective had been used previously in a medical sense, referring to the opening of pores, veins, and blocked passages. The word suggested that these increasingly popular drinks were entirely benign, being used as they were to stimulate the appetite for the enormous meals which people expected in nineteenth-century France. What in the body was being “opened” was left unclear.

  Now the apéritif has become a sharing ritual in France, a preparation for the companionship of dinner itself; it includes food offered as accompaniment. Whiskey is the favoured drink, especially for French men, whereas women are likely to prefer port, Cinzano, or even mineral water; in rich and fashionable circles one is served champagne. The word denotes two periods every day (“apéritif time”), before lunch and supper. The “opening” now has to do, in most people’s minds, with the beginning of the meal; the drink called the digestif, which complements it, also has a comforting sound and reputation, and marks the meal’s end.

  Drinks before dinner are often much stronger than those which accompany the meal. Beer and wine may, if drunk in moderation and “in their place,” be thought inoffensive, even nutritious—they can be drunk both before and during meals. But the higher the alcohol level, the less the drink is equated or associated with food; gin and whiskey are never consumed at the dinner table, but given a different role entirely. In North America, where alcohol has long been the object of passionate condemnation, having a drink with colleagues after work is of necessity a sharper, more decisive act than is taking the comfortable French apéritif. An evening drink can be used to mark the transition, for a North American, between worlds which the social system divides so brutally that the walls erected need resolute crossing: from work to relaxation, from constraint to freedom, from productivity and money-earning to its opposite, from hierarchy and role-maintaining to equality and camaraderie. There is danger in the “crossing over” and in the release of inhibitions, and even a degree of defiance. But this is contained by the limited, definite time slot allowed for the ritual (drinking must never become an “anytime” activity), by the specially allocated places in which it occurs, and by the general agreement that this should be a social performance.

  When people get home from work they might use an evening drink as a rite of passage not only from work to “play” but also from public to private—yet another of the great oppositions which form the framework of the modern industrial system. Drinks before dinne
r can perform all these transitions at once. If the dinner is one to which guests have been invited, drinking together will serve in addition as a “rite of passage” from each person’s own house into that of the host, and as both symbol and creator of solidarity among the artificially created gathering as they prepare to sit down together at table.

  TAKING OUR PLACES

  “Hsiang Yu invited Liu Pang to stay for a banquet. Hsiang Yu and his uncle Hsiang Po sat facing east, the patriarch Fan Tseng faced south, Liu Pang faced north, and Chang Liang, who was in attendance upon him, faced west.” These are the opening remarks in an early Han account (second century B.C.) of a banquet during which Hsiang Yu intended to have Liu Pang murdered. But Hsiang Yu, in spite of henchmen ready with swords, and hatred in the hearts of many, could not bring himself to make a move against his guest. His uncle, Hsiang Po, even joined in a sword dance, a dinner entertainment which was supposed to climax with the assassination, and shielded Liu with his body as the dance continued. When another killer appeared, with bristling hair and eyes “nearly starting from his head,” he was merely invited by the host to eat and drink. The text gives us no reason for this sudden protection for an enemy, but the seating arrangements, for those who can read them, tell the whole story. Sitting facing the east was to have the seat of honour. When Liu Pang sat down facing north, he was accepting Hsiang Yu (who was therefore able to sit with his uncle facing east) as his superior; it was enough to save his life, at least while they all sat at the feast.