Author Archives: Victoria Pratt

Etiquette in Places of Worship

Posted on by

1

Notre dame noel 2006Sometimes we might find ourselves in a religious space that is not our own. Here are some very general tips to help you not embarrass yourself. Also, remember that even within a religion, there is a TON of variation, so consider these extremely general guidelines.

In General:

  • Be respectful of beliefs that are not your own.

  • Be quiet before and during all services-turn your phone off (and don’t dare use it unless an emergency), no talking or excessive rustling.

  • Follow along with whatever everyone else is doing if you are unsure.

  • Dress fairly conservatively, many places of worship require arms and legs to be covered (or have more specific requirements), even if visiting as a tourist. Check before you go.

  • If you are inviting a non-member to your place of worship, it would be kind to give them a rundown of what to expect and what is expected of them.

  • Don’t eat or drink, unless you are specifically offered something as part of the service.

Christian Churches:

  • Be very quiet even before services start, people use the time for reflection and prayer. In fact, you should almost never talk above a whisper in church as there are always people who wish to pray. Churches are very similar to libraries.

  • Stand when the congregation stands but you may sit while they kneel.

  • Communion: if you do not wish to participate, you can remain in the pew. If the pew is too narrow to allow this and let others pass, you can go up and cross your arms over your chest to signal that you are not participating. (Note: in the Catholic faith, only Catholics are allowed to receive communion, it is very disrespectful to take communion if you aren’t Catholic.)

  • You are welcome to follow along with the prayers, or to keep silent.

  • Don’t applaud after any music or singing.

  • There are many different denominations, so don’t expect every church to be exactly the same. Many have looser or stricter requirements.

  • Grace: you may be asked to say grace when dining in a Christian home. There are a number of well known graces you can say if you feel comfortable, but a general thanking of the host and talking about the beauty of the food is fine. If you want more of a “grace” feel, you could try this secularized version: “for what we are about to receive, let us be truly thankful. Amen.” If someone else is saying grace, follow along with everyone else and either bow your head or join hands respectfully and either say amen at the end, or say nothing.

Jewish Synagogues

  • At many synagogues, most men will be wearing a yarmulke (a small round hat, also known as a kippa). They may have extras for you to borrow. Apparently it is not required, but it strongly suggested in more conservative synagogues.

  • There is a lot of standing and sitting, just go along with what everyone else is doing.

  • Services can last from 3-4 hours, so often people come and go and don’t stay for the entire time.

  • When the Ark is open, you shouldn’t enter or leave the sanctuary.

  • Don’t put prayer books on the floor.

  • Kiss anything that has fallen on the floor, like yarmulkes and prayer books.

  • It is inappropriate to applaud.

Muslim Mosques

  • Remove hats and shoes

  • Do not point your feet at the Qibla, the wall that aligns to the direction of Mecca.

  • Women are required to cover their heads, and everyone should cover as much skin as possible.

  • Sometimes there might be separate entrances or separate areas for men and women.

  • You may be greeted with the phrase “Assalam Allaikum” to which the correct response is “Wa alaikum-as-salam” though no one is really going to expect you to say it.

  • It is customary to enter with your right foot first and leave with your left foot first.

  • If you are a tourist, you should avoid coming to the mosque during the 5 daily prayer times.

Buddhist Shrines

  • Remove your hats and shoes.

  • Dress modestly, long pants are preferred to shorts.

  • Do not touch the Buddha statue. It is also respectful to back away from the Buddha statue a few paces before turning your back on it.

  • Pointing is very rude. If you need to indicate something, gesture with your whole RIGHT hand, palm up. Also don’t point your feet at any people or Buddhas.

  • If any monks or nuns enter while you are sitting, stand up.

  • Only use your right hand when giving or receiving anything.

  • Women should be careful not to touch a monk or to hand them anything directly as they must perform a lengthy cleansing ritual after any contact with a woman.

  • In the opposite style of a mosque, it is traditional to enter with your left foot and leave with your right foot.

  • You may greet monks by putting your palms together and bowing slightly.

Hindu Temple

  • You will usually need to take off your shoes. Many temples have cubbies outside where you can keep them, but if you’re worried about that, bring a bag and slip them in there.

  • There are generally pastes, flowers, and other objects that will be put on you. Be aware that you might get dirty.

  • Use only your right hand when making offerings.

  • There may be some places in the temple you are not allowed to go if you are not Hindu, so be aware that you may be blocked from entering certain rooms.

How to be a Good Guest

Posted on by

3

By Frederick Daniel Hardy (scan of painting) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

If you are a likeable person, sometimes you will be invited over to someone’s house for a meal, a party, or even for an overnight or multiple day visit. Here are some tips to ensure you will be invited back:

  • Always RSVP and honor your RSVP, aka don’t be a flake. Technically, etiquette says that you must accept all invitations as long as you don’t have a conflict. Personally I think having a date with your Netflix counts as a conflict. Also if you do have to cancel, try to make another plan.
  • Show up on time(ish). For a big, general party, this obviously isn’t as important. But for something like a dinner at someone’s house, you need to be pretty close to the time stated. THOUGH! You shouldn’t be there EXACTLY on time. Try aiming for 10-15 minutes late so you the hosts get an extra few minutes to finish setting up. For extremely close friends, you can be earlyish, but be prepared to help out.
  • Bring something! A hostess gift is a small present you bring to give the person throwing the party. Bottles of wine, boxes of chocolates, a jar of jam are all good ideas. Flowers aren’t recommended as much because the host/ess has to deal with them right then and there, but I think they are still nice. Hostess gifts are for the hostess, so don’t expect that they will pop open the wine then and there, they may have specific wines planned to complement a meal, though they often will. Obviously this type of advice is more for a dinner party, but even for a general house party, you should probably bring something, though in that case, I would expect for it to be eaten/drunk at the party.
  • Be good company! Part of your duty of being a guest is making a party a success. That means being pleasant to all the other guests (this is where the reciting times tables to dinner partners you can’t stand comes from in Jaya’s post about turning the tables– you want to give the impression you are having a good time) and doing your best to mingle.
  • If you really want to impress your hosts, send a quick thank you email/text/note(super fancy!) the next day to tell them how much fun you had.
  • If you are visiting for a couple of days, clean up after yourself, offer to help out with chores, perhaps cook or treat your hosts to a meal, and definitely send a thank you note! Also try to remember that fish and guests start to get old after 3 days, so try not to intrude on your friend’s hospitality too much. [INDIAN FISH STAYS GOOD IN THE FRIDGE FOR AT LEAST A WEEK, HOW DARE YOU-Jaya]
  • There is actually a DEBATE in the etiquette world about what to do with your sheets when you leave, making the bed vs stripping it. Just ask your host what they prefer!
  • If you are staying for a long time, try to do some things on your own. My mom once had a friend visit her in New York City and the guest spent the week on the couch watching TV. When she could have, you know, seen New York.

I Read a 500 Page Emily Post Biography So You Don’t Have To

Posted on by

0

Emily Post: Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Manners by Laura Claridge is a fascinating in-depth biography of our favorite etiquette expert, Emily Post. Very in-depth and looong. So I have compiled twenty of the most interesting facts about this woman who was so much more than just an etiquette expert.

1. Her father participated in the building of the Statue of Liberty base and she played inside as a girl. She also attended the opening of the Statue.

2. Her father was a famous architect who basically built Tuxedo Park, NY.

3. Was called the best banjoist in fashionable society when she was young. Banjos were trendy in the 1890s.

4. Motto was “toujours la politesse, jamais la verite” meaning “always courtesy, never the bare truth.”

5. She had a terrible loveless marriage and was divorced. As a dissatisfied wife, she took up writing and was a successful novelist.

6. She was a guest at Mark Twain’s 70th bday party.

7. After her divorce, she helped with interior design for her father’s architect friends and was somewhat of an amateur architect herself. She even wrote a famous book on architecture.

8. She started writing non fiction as an advice columnist but she was originally discouraged from writing about etiquette publishers thought it would be tedious for her.

9. She took a road trip across the US in 1915 with her sons and wrote about it. This was before there were good roads and they were constantly getting stuck in the mud.

10. Her son received the first award conferred on an American pilot during WWI.

11. Emily liked to claim that everyone had begged her to write etiquette, it was more something that was offered to her and she took on bc she found the existing books so bad.

12. She wrote the first edition Etiquette longhand in a year and a half. Published in July 1922, Etiquette originally cost $4 (abt $45 today).

13. Emily was listed as one of Life magazine’s 100 most influential people of the 20th century.

14. Statistics say that Etiquette was the second most stolen book from public libraries, after the bible through the end of the 20th century.

15. She was an activist against prohibition.

16. She hosted an etiquette radio show during the 1930s and loved being on the radio.

17. Was not above some snobbishness: when the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were touring the US, she said he should be addressed as royal highness and she should be addressed as “you.”

18. As an older woman, she had a closet full of red shoes.

19. After WWII she worked to bring Jewish orphans to the United States.

20. Didn’t care about elbows on the table and would regularly put hers on the table at fancy parties.

Thank Goodness We Don’t Have to Do That Anymore: Bundling

Posted on by

1

Bundling is another fun and folksy tradition that seems pretty strange today.

Bundling: because people have different mating practices than pigeons.
By Aomorikuma (あおもりくま) (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

The basic idea is: a boy and a girl like each other and want to get to know each other better. However everyone lives in tiny houses with tons of people so there is no privacy. Also it’s winter and the house is cold. So what do you do? You throw those two crazy kids into bed with a board between them for propriety’s sake and let them chat all night. (It also helped to conserve candles and firewood- practical!)

An alternate version was tying each person up in a sack to their necks so that no hanky panky could happen.

How well the practice actually worked at upholding good American morals is anyone’s guess- Washington Irving noted “that wherever the practice of bundling prevailed, there was an amazing number of sturdy brats born” so maybe it didn’t work so well after all.

There were even popular songs about it:

Nature’s request is, give me rest,

Our bodies seek repose;

Night is the time, and ’tis no crime

To bundle in our cloths.

Since in a bed, a man and maid

May bundle and be chaste;

It doth no good to burn up wood

It is a needless waste.

Let coat and shift be turned adrift,

And breeches take their flight,

An honest man and virgin can

Lie quiet all the night.

It seems to have been most common in colonial America and had pretty much died out everywhere by the 20th century, after being practiced by the Amish for some time beyond everyone else.

It seems like a kind of warm and cozy first date- maybe I will add it to my OkCupid profile. What do you think, would you like to bundle up with someone this winter?

 

You can read a LENGTHY 1930’s treatise on the practice here if you are interested.

 

Thank Goodness We Don’t Have to Do That Anymore: Shivaree

Posted on by

3

This isn’t really a shivaree [Via Flickr user greenmelinda]

Shivaree (charivari) is a practice in which people serenade a newly wedded couple in a cacophonous manner by yelling and banging pots and pans outside their window in the middle of the night.

The traditional European custom of charivari (shivaree is the common American spelling) was a way to punish those who had married against the community’s wishes- older men marrying too young women, new widow/ers getting married too soon, etc.

As the custom migrated to America, it became more celebratory than punitive, though sometimes it was considered a minor hazing for those who had gone against the norm in their marriage. Often it was a bawdy celebration, designed to interrupt the consummation of the marriage. Like trick or treaters, the revelers wouldn’t leave until offered some kind of refreshment.

I first encountered the custom in one of the Little House on Rocky Ridge books- the sequel series to Little House on the Prairie about Laura Ingalls Wilder’s daughter Rose. In the book, one of their farmhands gets married and that night all the neighbors go to the newlywed’s house and bang on pots and pans until the couple comes out and gives them snacks.

Shivarees mostly took place in the early to mid 1800’s and mostly in small, rural communities. I have, however, found records of the practice continuing in Canada well into the 1970’s. By that point, the practice was used to make a new bride feel welcome to the neighborhood if she had come from far away. Sometimes it was used  as a “reception” if there hadn’t been one for the wedding.

The expectation that the couple have enough food for the revelers was part of the gendered expectation of a wife to have refreshments ready at a moment’s notice for all who might drop by- definitely a less festive aspect of the custom.

Sometimes the shivareers would play pranks on the couple instead of making noise- filling their drawers with rice for example.

There is some evidence that the custom has evolved into the practice of kidnapping the bride at the reception and making the groom pay to get her back. Though I think that this custom is completely different and comes from a different ethnic tradition entirely. The pranking custom is still common among some social groups, I believe (did anyone have pranks played on them on their wedding night or while they were on their honeymoon? Tell me in the comments!). You would think that tying cans and shoes to the “get away” car would be part of this, but that comes from a more superstitious tradition of scaring away evil spirits.

So tell me, who else has heard of a shivaree??