SITREP: Operation Dinner Party

Hope, Love, Joy, and Peace

A lighted Christmas tree. Photo by Gerbil

My wife and I attended an Advent party last month which put into practice my proposal found in We Have to Make Phones Lame: Dinner parties as nexus of cultural rejuventation. Our friends and hosts, shockingly!, hadn’t even heard of Substack, let alone my genius proposal. Go figure.

There was food, drink, and making merry. A few hours in, our hostess, whom I’ve known since preschool, called the party into the living room and the Christmas tree, fitted with candles, was lit.

Four larger candles were set on a nearby table. Our hostess explained there was an Advent tradition of lighting four candles in the weeks leading up to Christmas, and that the candles were named Hope, Love, Joy, and Peace. Beforehand, four of us were asked to pick and read a poem for the evening. One of the party guests lit a candle and then a poem was read.

I read this excerpt from Tennyson’s poem “In Memoriam.”

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

The flying cloud, the frosty light:

The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind

For those that here we see no more;

Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife;

Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times;

Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

The civic slander and the spite;

Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;

Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.

After all the candles were lit and the poems were read we talked and sang Christmas hymns together. So simple, and enjoyable. This was obviously heartening to me on more than one level.

As the Woods family prepares to move into our new home this coming weekend, I look forward to hosting our own soirées in 2024, thus furthering the objectives of Operation Dinner Party.

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P.S. & quick note: Something resembling an annoucement/plan for turning on paid subscription and accepting poetry sumissions will come out this month. I still expect other happenings to unfold this year as well; all this will pick up steam after I’m a smidge more settled, a reality that is thankfully now in sight. As always, your attention and support is much appreciate. -Nathan