I love hosting. I’ve started to temper the frequency and extravagance though, as it isn’t often reciprocated.
We used to have big Christmas parties every year with 60/70 friends over. Fabulous event, huge amounts of fun, not much preparation needed as the house is already decorated, caterers took care of food and serving, which just left the cleaning up the next day (took 6 hours) and the enormous cost. I stopped planning it a few years back, as it just became expected as an annual event. I kind of thought it should be someone else’s turn. Seems no one wants to do that, so around December we stick to smaller dinners at our house or at a nice pub. I still get asked when our next big party is and get tagged in fb memory posts every December. The answer is the year after someone else hosts!
We still have birthday parties and bbqs at home, but they’re on a much smaller scale of 20ish people. I do need to get better at saying yes when asked if a friend can bring anything, as I always say just bring yourselves.
One of our friends is amazingly canny/cheeky as she literally gets everything catered by friends. At their last bbq before covid, they literally provided the bbq coal and condiments 😆 For some reason, they even borrowed our bbq tongs 🤨 The invite said “bring what you’d like to eat and drink”. So funny. She also hosts pot luck dinners, which are the weirdest random array of lukewarm food. She’s American, so it may be cultural. They are fairly well off, so it is strange to only partially host something. I even wish she’d cater fully and then ask for the money instead of everyone bringing a random uncoordinated dish.
Actually she’s the same friend who invited us over to share a takeaway. She lived 2 doors away. We arrived on time, but at the same time as HER delivery driver arrived with HER order. We get inside their house and the husband was waiting for us to arrive before ordering HIS takeaway, but apparently she was too hungry. Honestly the weirdest thing. We basically ordered a takeaway for ourselves, paid for it ourselves and ate it off their plates, drinking the wine we brought over. Whilst paying for a babysitter to sit in our house 😂
I do think hospitality should be reciprocated in some way. I never judge someone else’s house etc, so I don’t understand why someone’s house would be a barrier to hosting, especially if others bring dishes/wine etc.