Ask For Glass; Don’T Be Embarrassed

Dear Miss Manners: When, and why, did people stop using glassware? More and more often, when I am being entertained in someone’s home (not at a campsite or out on a patio), I am handed a soft drink or beer in a bottle or can with no glass in sight.

Is this the result of vending machines or everyone trying so hard to look “macho” and non-elitist? I still see beer steins and drinking glasses (plastic for outdoor use, too) displayed in stores or on somebody’s wedding list, but it seems the steins and glasses are becoming an endangered species. Will flatware be next?

I personally dislike drinking out of bottles, so when I hesitate the host or hostess may pick up on it and say, “Do you want a glass?” This is sometimes delivered in a tone of real surprise! How can one be a gracious guest but still enjoy some of the amenities?

Gentle Reader: Miss Manners was about to reply to your first question with, “When they discovered glasses have to be washed,” but she realized that was not quite true. There were centuries in which they must have known this because they did wash glasses; the demise of glassware occurred after the invention of the dishwasher.

One day, Miss Manners predicts, civilization will work its way back up from the primitive state in which you find it, and people will again take enough aesthetic pleasure in the niceties of life to consider the effort of cleaning glasses worthwhile. In the meantime, you should have no more embarrassment in asking, “May I trouble you for a glass, please?” than you would in asking for a fork if the pasta came without one.

Dear Miss Manners: I have noticed that at many semi-public gatherings such as a club luncheon or a company picnic, the invocation is usually given “in the name of Christ Jesus” or similar wording, even though there are persons in the group who are Jewish or of other non-Christian denominations. I have also noticed that at the local high school football games, the invocation is neutral, addressing only God or Lord and not mentioning Jesus or Christ. What’s the rule in these situations?

Gentle Reader: The rule is to offend as few people as possible and it never works. Even the blandest prayers offend the non-religious because they are too religious, and the religious because they are not enough so.

Furthermore, the absence of any blessing on occasions where one was traditionally offered offends those who are exasperated that we have gotten so contentious that even the most humble and traditional of customs is bound to offend people.

At this impasse, Miss Manners calls for a note of grace. Those who feel strongly should argue the matter with organizers beforehand, but at the time a prayer is offered must at least sit in respectful silence.

Now whom has she offended?

Dear Miss Manners: Are the pleats in a cummerbund worn up or down? I’ve heard down, so as not to catch crumbs; and up, so as to catch crumbs.

Gentle Reader: The pleats are worn up. Miss Manners has also heard that it was to catch crumbs, as well that it was to catch ashes and, more decorously, that it was to tuck away opera tickets.

However, gentlemen who can’t get their food into their mouths should excuse themselves, rather than storing it on their persons; no gentleman should smoke unless there are ashtrays out, so there is no need to set himself on fire; and absent-minded gentlemen should put their wives in charge of the opera tickets. Miss Manners suggests you don a waistcoat instead and go partying with a better crowd.

Judith Martin is the author of “Miss Manners on Painfully Proper Weddings” (Crown).