Host can pick helpers if all volunteer

Back when people gave their own dinner parties, rather than recruiting guests to do their cooking and cleaning, Thanksgiving was a traditional exception. Since legend has it that the Pilgrims and the American Indians both contributed to the feast, cooperation is often the order of the day.

At ordinary dinner parties, hosts should accept only minimal help from guests who volunteer, and not expect to return to pre-cooking cleanliness while the guests are still present to be entertained. But at Thanksgiving, there is a feeling that clean up should be cooperative. And everyone has an idea about who should do it:

• The gentlemen think the ladies should, because they have always done it in the past.

• The ladies think the gentlemen should, because it is high time they took a turn.

• The younger generation believes that the older generation should, because they have always done so.

• The older generation believes that the younger generation should, because it is time for them to take this over.

• Those who contributed to the cooking believe it is only fair for those who did not to do the clean up.

• Those who did not cook believe it is only sensible for those who did to finish the job and clean up.

• Those in whose house the dinner takes place believe it is only fair for others to pitch in for the clean up.

• Those who are guests in the house believe it is the domain of the hosts to clean up.

• Those who want to watch the football game believe that doing so is more important than cleaning up.

• Those who don’t want to watch the football game believe that doing so is less important than cleaning up.

This is not to say that everyone is foisting the job on everyone else because there are notable exceptions. There is always the elderly hostess who insists on doing everything herself and goes huffing and puffing around while everyone else listens awkwardly to the clank of the pots so as not to miss the possible thud of an exhausted body. And there is always the energetic guest who insists on cleaning up as he sees fit, violating all the hosts’ rules about when to remove plates, how to deal with the garbage and where to put things back.

Miss Manners hates to interfere in all this robust family life, but would like to suggest an equally inequitable but possibly less emotionally hazardous system:

Everyone volunteers. The host chooses a few, apparently at random, but probably those who seem awake and are least likely to get in the way and most likely to provide amiable kitchen conversation. And if this doesn’t work smoothly the hosts let someone else volunteer to give Thanksgiving dinner next year.