For a couple of decades (since the early 1990s) we held an annual holiday open house. When we were still living in NYC this started out as a party for my husband’s recording studio–but me being me and Danny being the boss, I did almost all the cooking, made the invitations, etc–and it was left up to the guys at This Way Productions to buy the drinks, make up the invite list, and ferry all the mountains of food down to Soho where the studio was. When Danny and his partners closed down the studio we had gotten into the habit of a holiday party. In 2002, we had our last NYC-based party–and Danny flew out to San Francisco the next day to start his new job, with me and the girls following two weeks later when school let out. A year later, when December rolled around it seemed entirely natural to have the open house again: the Robins-Caccavo Annual Holiday Party became a thing we did. Since Danny and I comprise two very different parts of the creative world (he’s the Sound guy; I’m the Words person) and two different work communities, it was always fun to see those worlds collide. New friendships form. Vast quantities of food disappear.
Every year we’d have about 70 people showing up somewhere between 2pm and 7pm. Spread out through the house and over five hours this was manageable–and permitted me to deal with my social anxiety by scurrying around refilling bowls and checking ice levels when I couldn’t handle small talk for a few minutes. Those five hours meant a week of planning, buying, and cooking. We might have just ordered pizza, but where would be the fun in that? Every year I made a turkey, a ham, an immense pot of chili (and latterly, a somewhat smaller pot of vegetarian chili). Plus cookies, sweet breads, and occasionally a birthday cake (for myself, since my birthday often fell on or around the Sunday of the party). Bread and cheese, bagels and lox, chips and salsa… I did all this cooking mostly in the evenings, around child-care and work responsibilities. I look back it all now in awe, particularly since the party was usually 1-2 weeks after Thanksgiving, and 2-3 weeks before Christmas: the season of kitchen time. Still, there was something wonderful about seeing this vast mix of people we liked getting to know each other. And no one left hungry.
At the end of the day the turkey carcass went in a pot for stock; the ham bone in the freezer to be deployed later for pea soup. I would then wind up with my feet up while Danny bundled up the leftovers and did the lion’s share of the cleaning. I married a very good man. And round about November of the next year people would start asking “are you going to have your party again this year?” And the answer, until 2020, was always “of course.”
Covid changed a lot of things. We haven’t had a party since 2019 (oh, those days of innocence). Would we like to do it again? Yes. But I’m not sure how many people want to attend closely packed social events with people they don’t know well (I mean, I am pretty certain that everyone on our guest list would be fully vaccinated and smart enough to stay home if they were sick, but can I promise that?). We could invite fewer people, but part of the joy, to me, was inviting everyone we knew and seeing them interact. It’s the social scientist in me.
Then there’s the… well, to be frank, the age thing. I consider throwing the party and part of me notes, in the immortal words of Danny Glover, that I might be “too old for this shit.” I’m pretty active, and I take joy in getting things done, but… turkey, ham, chili, baking, cleaning, organizing… It’s a lot. Do I actually want to be doing all that?
At the moment the answer is still yes.
And some things might even make it better. For one thing, we now have a relatively huge back yard that is civilized and attractive, where people who are not comfortable gathering inside the house could hang out. This might mean it’s a better idea to have the party in July than in December–summer in San Francisco can be chilly and foggy, but it’s less of a gamble than relying on a December day to be sunny and not prohibitively cold.
The window for this year’s party has closed (you can’t just gin something like this up in a week). But maybe next year we can try again. Maybe I’d better start planning now.
