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The Beauty of Semantic Confusion

Here's a helpful tip for those of you who are going to be moving to a new place in the near future: make sure you throw your housewarming party within two weeks of your move-in date. This method has not one, but two advantages:

1. It forces you to unpack everything in a timely manner.

2. It insulates you from criticism regarding your home decorating skills. ("Well of course the place is a shambles. The poor guy just moved in!")¹

The housewarming party was a success. People of all ages came, ate, drank, and generally seemed to be having a good time. Always risky to bring down the walls of family, work friends, elementary school friends, middle school friends, college friends, poker friends, MOTWM friends, and associated spouses, significant others, and kids. But it all seemed to work out. The only really tricky part was that I didn't want everyone to think that the housewarming party was an excuse for a big gift-fest. I hate big gift-fests. Everyone hates big gift-fests. I just wanted people to come over, eat, have a good time. Simple.

Now, a naive person might think that there's an easy solution: just say in the announcement, "No gifts, please." Unfortunately, on the scale of rudeness, this statement is considered to be just a notch or two above stamping, "CASH GIFTS PREFERRED" on your wedding invitation. Don't take my word for it -- go ask Miss Manners or Carolyn Hax if you don't believe me.² So... everyone assumes they need to bring something to the party, but you don't want them to, but you can't tell them not to, because that would be rude. However, if they bring it up on their own, you can say something, in which case they will wonder -- okay, does he really mean it? And will I look bad if everyone else brings something and I don't? We Earthlings, we are a funny species.³

Fortunately, it was possible to cut down on the gifts drastically by falling back on the age-old principle: if you can't win the game, cheat. Rather than having a "Housewarming Party", I called it an "Open House Party". Sure, everybody knows that housewarming parties and gifts go together. But what the heck do you bring to an Open House party? Do you bring anything at all? What is an Open House party, anyway? Who knows? Who cares? Semantic confusion, my friends. It's a beautiful thing.

1. Of course I mostly get a free pass on #2 anyway, being an unmarried straight male and all.

2. The reasoning being that no party should be held under the assumption that the guests "owe" gifts to the host, and that therefore bringing up the subject explicitly is rude, even if you're only bringing it up to reject it.

3. No doubt this is the kind of stuff that drives people with Asperger's totally crazy.

Posted by Evan Goer on Apr. 20, 2004 at 11:01 PM | Comments (2)

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