Navigating the pitfalls of the festive season can be tricky. Photo / 123RF
From eating peas properly to posting photographs of gifts on social media, William Hanson responds to your festive etiquette dilemmas.
Navigating the pitfalls of the festive season can be tricky – so we’ve enlisted the help of an etiquette expert to guide us through the dos and don’ts of Christmas.
Is it acceptable to propose on Christmas Day? Is it appropriate to serve the wine a guest has given you as a gift? Readers sent in their Christmas etiquette dilemmas for William Hanson to answer. Here’s what he had to say…
Q: Is it acceptable to post about Christmas presents on social media?
A: The thing is, it’s linked intrinsically to money…
“…If you are posting a photograph of 50 presents under the tree or displayed on a sofa, it’s showing that you’re very lucky and that you’ve got friends and family who spend money on you. Whereas, if it’s a lump of solitary coal you’re posting about, then it’s going to be slightly tragic. And actually, Christmas shouldn’t be about how many presents you do or don’t get.
“I probably wouldn’t. However, let’s say you gave me a present and you weren’t with me on Christmas Day, I can take a photograph and say, ‘Love the socks. Thank you so much. Here they are on my feet.’ Technology can be good, but posting about it on Instagram – no, I don’t think so.”
Q: In the past, a bottle of wine would suffice when attending a dinner party. What is the correct etiquette?
A: In the past, a bottle of wine may have been sufficient, but it was not really correct…
“…so sorry to break it to you that you were committing a social sin. Chocolates used to be the only thing that were acceptable, or champagne – providing you knew they drank. Today, wine is fine so long as you don’t expect it to be served that evening and if you know they particularly like whatever you’ve chosen.”
Q: What is the appropriate response when someone tells you that he or she is getting divorced?
A: If your own spouse announces this, then it’s understandable if you are a bit peeved. But if it is a friend that is getting divorced, all you can really do is listen and make sympathetic noises…
“…Each divorce is different, of course, and the circumstances will dictate how much cause for celebration or how much sorrow you need to express. But the best advice is to listen and let the friend talk, if they want to.”
Q: Is it called pudding or dessert?
A: A sweet and sticky bone of contention between upper-class and aspirational Britons…
“…and the rest of the world is the insistence on calling the final course of a meal ‘pudding’ rather than the globally more commonplace ‘dessert’.
“My American students will often comment that, to them, a pudding is a type of dessert (cooked in a pudding basin). This may be true in Charleston, but it’s de trop in Chelsea.
“Although most Britons now will use the words interchangeably, they were once very different. Puddings were heavy, flour-based staples of working-class kitchens: tasty morsels such as gooey treacle sponge, tart or moreish spotted dick. Desserts were elaborate, sweet confections served at the end of grand dinners in great houses, such as marchpanes, syllabubs and flummeries. These required greater culinary skill and were presented by aristocratic hosts to denote their status and show off the work of their kitchen staff.
“Sugar became cheaper in the 19th century, and with the change from service a la francaise to the sequential service a la russe, these desserts started to be seen on middle-class dining tables, too. Shock horror! To maintain some social distinction, the aristocracy added a fruit course at the end of dinner, and called this ‘dessert’ and anything sweet a ‘pudding’.”
Q: When writing Christmas cards, surely a fountain pen is a must? It conveys sincerity, effort and style
A: A question one would only get from a Telegraph reader!
“…I think yes, a fountain pen is preferable. There is a really old-fashioned rule – we’re talking 100 years ago at least – that men would write in black ink and women would write in blue ink. That’s obsolete now and, actually, if you have slightly messy handwriting, like me, blue ink is slightly nicer than black ink, which looks heavier.”
Q: If you invite friends for supper and they bring, as they inevitably do, a bottle or two of some nourishing liquid, do you open and enjoy it with them, or is it a gift to enjoy at a later date?
A: It was originally called a hostess gift. Now it’s called a host gift…
“…If you don’t turn up with something, it’s now more obvious and it stands out. So, yes, you do turn up with something, but you don’t expect to see it again.
“If you’re hosting, it is your prerogative as to when you open it. It’s not a party gift. It’s really for you to open at a later date to say thank you for going to this effort of hosting and cooking. But, if you think what the guest has brought is much better than what you’re providing, then it’s fine for you to open it.”
Q: Is it acceptable to propose on Christmas Day?
A: It depends what else is happening on the day…
“…If it’s just you and your hopefully fiance then yes, I think that can be quite nice. The trouble is if you are celebrating with the wider family or a wider group of friends, it makes it all about you. And actually, Christmas is for everybody. Christmas can already be exciting enough.”
Q: It’s not good etiquette to eat peas off the side of the fork, so how does one do so?
A: Lots of people tend to eat peas like that…
“…The trouble is, your arms have to come out rather than sitting tucked in close to each other, how they should be. Imagine a piece of paper is under your arms at all times.
“The correct way to eat peas in Britain is to push them onto the fork so the elbows stay in. Or, if you’ve got mashed potato or roast potato, then you can use these like glue, which helps.
Q: This sounds a bit pathetic, but how do you eat salad, that is lettuce, correctly and elegantly?
A: Don’t say it’s pathetic, because it’s a very interesting question. I’ve spent my life thinking about how to eat lettuce correctly…
“…Historically, you would eat with just a fork, but that was when salads were not the salads they are today. It wasn’t tuna nicoise, Caesar or cobb salad. It was lettuce torn up in the kitchen by hand into tiny, postage stamp-sized pieces.
“It was an accompaniment as opposed to an entire course. Knife blades would often corrode with lettuce – and also fish. The same reason why you would just use a fork with fish.
“Still some people insist on eating salad with just a fork. That’s fine for a classic French salad, but for big American-style salads, you should use a knife and fork. Knife blades are now stainless steel in most instances, so they don’t corrode when they touch lettuce. So you would eat salad exactly how you eat anything else.
Q: Should you expect your host to accommodate your dietary needs, or bring your own food?
A: Almost everybody has got a dietary requirement now…
“…In the olden days, it was a lot easier because people just used to die, whereas now they have to let you know in advance, which is fair enough. A death on Christmas Day would just ruin it.
“If you’ve got a relatively standard dietary requirement – vegetarian, gluten-free or an intolerance to something – then I think that’s quite easy for a host to accommodate with advance notice.
“If, however, you’ve got three or four quite specific dietary requirements or allergies, then I would advise suggesting to bring something that you can stick in the microwave or oven to reheat.
Q: When should one pull Christmas crackers? Before, during or after the Christmas dinner?
A: Before, because then you can eat the Christmas meal with the paper hat on…
“…If you’re doing it at the end, then you can only wear the hat for about 30 seconds until you stand up and it falls off.
“You must do it quickly though, because you’ve been served hot food. I suggest reading the joke out to the table during the meal when everyone gets going. You don’t want to wait for the entire table to go around doing their joke while the turkey is getting cold. Very boring.”
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