How to Throw a Birthday Party Without Losing Your Mind

And other reflections on hospitality, ancient and modern

Photo by Lidya Nada on Unsplash

Earlier this week, my youngest child celebrated a birthday. And this Friday, I hosted a birthday party for her in our home. There were twelve children (in addition to mine), and four other moms. The decibel level was through the roof. We all had fun, no one cried (or, at least, not for long), and I didn’t lose my mind. I’ll share the how in a minute, but first I want to talk a little bit about the why.

The Ancient Art of Hospitality

At a crucial point during his ten-year journey home, the Homeric hero Odysseus is shipwrecked on an island—something that happened to him a lot, alas. But this time, the king’s daughter happens to find him and invites him to the palace as a guest. There Odysseus receives a kind welcome from the Phaeacians and their king. Their warm and generous hospitality in The Odyssey is presented as a superlative virtue. It also stands in sharp contrast to the Cyclopes, who eat their guests instead (that’s considered very bad hospitality, in case you’re wondering).

Throughout various ancient epics and in the Bible, hospitality comes up repeatedly, and the hosts are judged on their ability to be hospitable. For instance, Abraham kindly hosts three angels in disguise in Genesis 18. Hospitality, it seems, is a virtue that is praised in all ancient cultures. And it’s a virtue that modernity seems to be forgetting.

Hospitality is becoming so rare in some segments of the population today, that some people will look at you like you are growing a second head if you invite them into your home instead of meeting at a neutral place—like a coffee shop or restaurant. And yet, loving other people better begins with hospitality. Exercising hospitality more purposefully—and, really, just more—is one of the goals that I articulated in my New Year’s Resolution for this year.

Still, there are many reasons why hospitality seems uncomfortable to so many today—both hosting and going over to someone’s house as a guest. For one thing, doing anything that we don’t have the habit of doing feels difficult and stressful. (We’ll revisit in more detail why this is difficult and stressful in a minute.) Also, we are more isolated as a society, and Covid only intensified the isolation—in summer 2024, the Surgeon General declared loneliness in America an epidemic with adverse consequences for public health. It really is this bad.

So how do we form closer friendships and bonds with other people? It takes quality time together, time spent doing something meaningful with other people. Just working together doesn’t count. Church and club activities together do. Several studies have tried to estimate the number of hours needed to grow closer. Here’s the summary of one such study:

Jeffrey Hall found that it takes roughly 50 hours of time together to move from mere acquaintance to casual friend, 90 hours to go from that stage to simple “friend” status and more than 200 hours before you can consider someone your close friend.

A few years ago, I recall reading another similar study with the community group in our church. These calculations explain why when you join, say, a new group (at church or elsewhere), you cannot immediately have deep and meaningful conversations. We need time together to form bonds before we feel comfortable sharing more openly. Time spent doing meaningful activities together counts. And hospitality, yet again, comes into it.

Okay, but how, in particular, do we get into the habit of hosting others? And how do we make it less stressful for other people to come into our homes on a regular basis? Perhaps the best answer is the most obvious: just do it. (Thanks, Nike). But there’s more that we can do to make it easier. It involves doing less.

Scruffy Hospitality

I first heard of “scruffy hospitality” about a decade ago—and this may be the delightful essay that started it. What is scruffy hospitality? It means basically what it sounds like: hosting people even if your house is a bit scruffy—and so are you. Maybe you’re serving leftover macaroni and cheese instead of something really nice that you are making from scratch. And maybe your house is a little bit messy—and no one cleaned the baseboards this month. Or year.

The focus in scruffy hospitality is on getting over one key hurdle that people have for hosting: perfection. If you think that hospitality requires a perfectly clean home and exquisitely cooked meals, you may never have people over again—or, at least, you will not have them over until after your kids are grown, because tiny humans are anathema to order and cleanliness. Of both your floors and your baseboards.

Hosting a Party Without Losing Your Mind

And so, this brings us back to my daughter’s Friday afternoon birthday party. Have you noticed how kids’ birthday parties have become an entire industry of late? You could spend a small fortune to host the party at a facility of some sort (that scary mouse pizza place, a gym, a bounce house), effectively paying for the privilege of not having people in your home and for not having to clean up after the party (I admit, this last one is kind of a nice selling point).

Instead, however, a birthday party could be the perfect opportunity for hospitality—especially scruffy hospitality! And that’s what we did.

We already have a standing weekly Friday afternoon playdate with a group of families in our town. When the weather is nice, we meet at a local playground for two hours. In the recent weeks, because of the cold, we’ve been meeting at one family’s home.

This week, I asked to hijack the weekly playdate and turn it into a birthday party at our house instead. The prep: I cooked a massive quantity of frozen tater tots and dinosaur shaped vegetable nuggets (thank you, Aldi!), and sliced a bunch of apples. Throw it all on a large platter, and everyone was happy. It actually looked like fancy party food despite requiring minimal effort.

I also prepared a crockpot with an easy gluten free pasta dish for the moms, in case anyone didn’t want to eat dinosaur shaped finger foods. Adults can be strange like that.

The kids played and ate, we did the cake-and-candles thing at one point, and then everyone just played and ate and played some more. I did not plan any games or activities, and it turned out to not be necessary, indeed. The moms sat back and drank tea. And the birthday girl had a wonderful party with the most important gift of all—her friends.