There is nothing jollier than a family lunch attended by multiple generations, enjoying the lift of a first drink and the comforting paleolithic protection of familial reunification.
There is also nothing more depressing than shoehorning the dregs out of the door at the bitter end, after a second braai, and excess has pulled the scabs from old wounds and verbal skirmishes have escalated into full scale battles.
Which is why these days, successful events require prior formal agreement on inflammatory subjects such as The Donald, religion or family inheritance, with WhatsApp group replies to the perennial “What can we bring?” including a signed copy of the Ante Lunch Contract. Ante in this case taking its Latin meaning.
Wasps seem to be the worst cultural grouping at institutionalising family gatherings. The Friday night Shabbat meal is a wonderful tradition. Friends of mine of the Lebanese diaspora descend regularly on the designated family member on Sundays in meaningful numbers after church, laden with whisky and kibbeh for lengthy family feasts that span the afternoon and early evening.
In many cultures, families live with their parents, which means most meals are three generational. This is taking it a bit far. Marriage is not supposed to be all purgatory. Personal space is hard enough to find with children in the house without your mother-in-law claiming the remote in your favourite armchair with a glass of scotch.
I like to get my immediate family involved in the preparation of the meal when we host a semi-annual family lunch. God forbid a child be permitted to watch The Simpsons while there is work to be done. Presbyterian industry is required from all, with Mozart providing the soundtrack. Chopping, whizzing and careful measurement will be taking place in between consultations of Delia Smith’s bible or my mother’s Women’s Institute recipe book. Over time, collective work has created a group pride in the product.
Wine will be opened and decanted or chilled an hour before the guests arrive. The quality and quantity are calibrated to the audience. We will start with relatively decent and descend once the taste buds are neutralised. Bubbly will be on ice, along with some rosé in summer. In times of prosperity, the ingredients for a cocktail will also have been laid out. A colourful Campari, nartjie juice and soda is a current favourite — courtesy of the Friday Club. Aperol spritzes are too sweet and have become passé. If you must do a spritz, a Campari one is better. The ingredients for negronis will be stock for emergencies — like when guests cancel their Ubers and start to erode the best parts of the wine collection.
Early comers will typically be put to work beside the children, tossing the final ingredients of their salad or slipping a potato dauphinoise into the oven.
Everyone usually arrives in a mad rush of doorbell chimes, hugs, handshakes and drink pouring. Most will arrive laden with dishes of food, a cool box, and occasionally flowers.
I usually concentrate on the margins of the age spectrum. I particularly like talking to old people. We are convinced that the constant challenges life throws at us are unique, but they are usually just a variation of something that has happened before. And while the demographic of SA baby boomers who are usually in attendance have had an unusually easy go of it, they are still full of wisdom that any sensible human should be absorbing like blotting paper. It is an evolutionary imperative that we transmit the best parts into the progeny, at least during breaks from Minecraft.
I also like to engage the children, remembering the adults who had taken time to ask me questions in the past and trying to pay that forward. Kids are also reassuringly honest and a good source of family scandal.
Braaiing is wonderful, aromatic and feels patriotically authentic, but it is not a sensible option for large affairs unless you outsource the actual verb to a trusted family member with the correct credentials. The act takes the host away from the party for too long. Anything that can be pre-cooked is better. I love curries but it is difficult to satisfy everyone’s capacity for spice and heat. They are also a good option for catering for vegetarians. It is no longer acceptable to expect them to survive on salad alone.
The authentic characteristics of the individuals come into focus just before dessert. The octogenarian-alpha male-paterfamilias, adorned in perfectly combed moustaches and gin blossoms at the ceremonial head of the table, will rattle on his glass at this stage, claiming the floor. A rambling war story will follow with one bony hand grasping a bottle of claret and the other, a glass. The story will peter out midway, while his head bows, and he falls asleep, his right hand still clasping the bottle.
This is when troublemakers take their cue to ask catalytic questions, on banned subjects. The right-wingers, emboldened by the increasing global success of their political kin will gallantly admit that Trump could be a fascist by strict definition but praise him for euthanising woke-ism, and then enthusiastically embellish by providing an example of his abolishment of medical funding for the transgender folk in Outer Guatemala. This will trigger a youth into an apoplectic rebuttal. Then, a bright spark will deflect us into a religious debate on the perpetual fires in the Middle East, which will somehow eventually segue into family inheritance and how a great uncle swindled everyone out of the family farm and Great Aunt Edna’s stirling fortune.
During one of these debates my corpulent grandmother was so consumed by the argument that she lost physical control and let fly an inadvertent gaseous emission that rattled the wine glasses on the table. Fortunately, this seismic interruption autocorrected the crowd who all laughed so much they forgot the argument and we moved onto a collective memory of our post-2019 World Cup braai. She remained mortified.
On another occasion, this time a Christmas lunch, the fire was doused by an elderly family member receiving an adult toy disguised in the packaging of a wine stopper during secret Santa. And his continued frustration when the contraption would not fit into the end of a wine bottle, to perform the function its packaging suggested.
The paterfamilias will have woken by this stage, wondering why everyone is talking over him, and continuing where he left off, talking over anyone who dares to interrupt.
At this stage the children will have delved into the fancy dress box and formed up adjacent to the table like the cast of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, ready perform an impromptu variety show that will resemble a dance from Little Miss Sunshine. The creepy incontinent uncle who is a doppelgänger for an ageing Peter Ustinov will lean into the frame at this stage but will fall asleep in his chair before the end of the performance.
When the clearing up is being done the next morning there will be the usual complaints, but we will all be happier for the privilege of the interaction, comfortable in the knowledge that water flows easily under the family bridge. Families are not just for Christmas.
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