This table from one of our House to Home articles is certainly a designer demo, and one thing you won’t see on the perfect place settings is cell phones.
A friend asked me to write an article about put-away-the-cell-phone-dinner etiquette — not just for the kids. She said adults at her dinner table were often worse than the kids.
Here are some tips from the Momtini Lounge. She writes up suggestions from AT&T for a cell-free zone on Turkey Day that include silenced cell phones at least during dinner. She also adds that the family photo should be taken before or after dinner rather than during — that limits anyone’s need for the word of the year “selfies” with a mouthful of turkey.
I hate to admit it, but if my brother and I’d had cell phones when we were kids — we’d be shooting mouthfuls of food just to gross each other out, and it would not have been pretty. My parents were lucky that a color TV was high-tech in those days. But we were pretty stealthy kids and would never have risked getting caught during a big family dinner. The consequences would have been disastrous.
The dinner table should be sacred. “Don’t put your cellphone on the table or use it during a meal” is one of the many rules students at MIT learn during what they call charm school. Read the article here.
Fashion writers from the New York Times agree in the article Step Away from the Phone.
They maintain that disconnecting is a luxury and that private time is precious. Read the entire eye-opening story here.
The New York Times article closes with some good news from Bronson van Wyck, a party planner in New York who said that NOT being available 24/7 is the new chic.
Here’s to the new chic at your Thanksgiving dinner party. What a great new trend.
Pam Parker is the editor of Lake Erie LifeStyle, Her Times and House to Home at the Erie Times-News in Erie, Pa. She is mom to three, stepmom to three and GramPam to one.
