Dear Etiquetteer:
What is the proper way to rescind an accepted invitation, other than COVID concerns?
My spouse and I have attended a holiday party for several years, held at a friend’s home. My spouse is the primary contact for this friend and they recently sent an email with details of the party. Their message was: “We don’t have your spouse’s email, could you please forward this to them?” The message continued with a message to me: “Hey! Here’s the dossier for your character for the party. Your task will be to make all six of your “statements” at some point early in the evening and pay attention to the other guests’ statements so you can identify the murderer. Once that person has been identified, you’ll need to read your final pronouncement to help wrap everything up. You can’t be the murderer — your spouse said you’re not a big fan of this sort of thing, so we fixed the game to give you a bit of an out.”
Please help!
Dear Murder Mystery Victim:
So much to unpack! It’s disconcerting to find out that a party you’ve attended comfortably for years — and expected to be the same — has been transformed into a murder mystery in which all the guests are expected to take a role and participate actively. You’re probably even more upset that, apparently, you weren’t informed about this on the invitation (if you saw it) and that your spouse communicated with the hosts to make the evening more palatable for you without telling you yourself. Etiquetteer understands your unhappiness, and offers you compassion.
There are two solutions to this mystery. Which would you choose?
YOU DON’T GO TO THE PARTY
Your hosts, not to mention your spouse, are at fault for keeping you out of the loop. Games and roleplaying are not everyone’s cup of tea, and no less a partisan than Amy Vanderbilt is in your corner. About bridge after dinner she writes “No one should play cards against his own real desire or he will probably make a miserable partner.” She also writes “The desire of the majority decides the evening, but non-participating guests should be helped by the hostess to do something they enjoy — to listen to the radio, read a book or the evening papers, play chess, or take a walk if they must stay to the end.”* Those opportunities aren’t available for you. Anyone at a murder mystery not participating in the mystery would kill the party.
After discussing with your spouse, email the hosts directly and cc: your spouse. Choose a tone of Infinite Regret instead of sounding huffy and annoyed. If you decide to decline, you need to a) express gratitude for years of previous hospitality, b) regret that the change in the party format was not made clear to you until now, c) tell them you are yielding your place for another of their friends who could enter into the game wholeheartedly — “try as I might, these kinds of games just aren’t for me and I want everyone there to have a good time” — and d) wish them a beautiful Holiday of Their Choice and a Happy New Year. Suggest getting together after the holidays if you choose.
If your spouse attends without you, which is Perfectly Proper, complete loyalty to you is expected. If anyone asks about you, nothing more than “My darling couldn’t come tonight so I’m here for both of us” is all that’s needed. If the hosts have the bad manners to complain about you not being there, Etiquetteer absolutely expects your spouse to “fall on the sword” and say “It’s my fault. I didn’t tell my darling that this was going to be a murder mystery this year.”
All that said, Etiquetteer does sympathize to a degree with your hosts. They were likely just looking for a way to spark a party they felt was getting stale. They may have chosen a murder mystery because of the exact number of people they invite every year. Think of poor Carol Kennicott in Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street, shaking up the scene in pokey old Gopher Prairie by adding party games and paper costumes and celebrating new talent when everyone just wanted to do the same tired old things. Etiquetteer has always had a soft spot for poor Mrs. Kennicott.
Which brings Etiquetteer to the second solution:
YOU GO TO THE PARTY
You are not at fault in this situation, no question. But if your absence breaks up the party, that could have an impact on this entire group of friends. Which is what made Etiquetteer think of Cecil Vyse in E.M. Forster’s A Room With a View. Freddy needed to find a new fourth for tennis after George left; only Cecil was available. “‘I say, Cecil, do play, do, there’s a good chap. It’s Floyd’s last day. Do play tennis with us, just this once.’ Cecil’s voice came: ‘My dear Freddy, I am no athlete. As you well remarked this very morning, “There are some chaps who are no good for anything but books”; I plead guilty to being such a chap, and will not inflict myself on you.’” We all know that the person who came out of this worst was Cecil.
And you would probably be surprised to find Emily Post Herself rooting for you to go. Under the heading “If You Want to Go to Bed, Don’t Begin Games,” she tells the story of a “haphazard” party, “one of those nightmare evenings where the quarreling neighbors and the one divorced couple found themselves seated together, and the inflexible conservatives were next to the violent radicals, and the highbrows next to morons, the snobs next to those who most despised them.” The evening was saved when “irrepressible” Jonesy cheerfully commanded the party to play musical chairs. “. . . in less than 15 minutes a stiff, dull, and utterly unmixable party had become almost a children’s romp.” At least in your case you already know everyone on the guest list.
Emily’s conclusion is most important: “. . . something akin to a rule for happiness, which might be . . . Let’s not pretend that we are old while we are still young. And above all, let us not get actually old, ever, by being lazy or overcritical and always ready to protest, ‘Oh, no!’ It’s a thousand times better to encourage the frame of mind that exclaims, ‘Oh, yes, let’s!’ -- whether we happen to have lived 15 years or 50.”
If you do decide to go — and Etiquetteer almost hopes you do — you need to go without betraying at all that you’d rather not be there. Any price you exact for your Cheerful Participation is between you and your spouse, only.
So here are Etiquetteer’s two solutions to your mystery. Choose well and wisely.
*Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Book of Etiquette: A Guide to Gracious Living, 1954, page 294.
**Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage, 1950, pages 408-409.