Comfort and Joy

[simplestgift]

Who: Come one, come all! ...In formal attire.
What: A Christmas ball, old world style.
When: December 1st, beginning around five in the afternoon and ending when the last person leaves.
Where: The rec center.
Summary: Earth's eighteenth-century peeps are throwing one hell of a party.
Rating: Well, considering no one is serving water? Probably PG-13 for alcohol consumption and the results thereof (there's coffee and hot chocolate!).

The recreation center has been utterly transformed.

The doors open to a host of candles and a warm, old-world smell and feel. The scent of food and spices hangs in the air—mulled wine, wassail, evergreen boughs, fresh bread and roast meat. Cream brocades, simple but elegant, are draped over the walls. Traditional red rugs have been thrown over the floor. Gone are the billiard tables, ping-pong, and foosball. It looks like a different place entirely, every table impeccably dressed with light linen cloths and set with fine china and crystal. At least one-half of the room is cleared and ready for dancers.

The tables are lit with candles, and five chandeliers have been temporarily added to the room for more light, giving the room a golden glow instead of the sterile luminescence of fluorescent lighting. On the tables, boughs of evergreen and holly surround the candles, and mistletoe has been hung discreetly here and there. In one corner of the dancing area, by a large and beautifully decorated fir tree (Buffy’s insistence), the musicians are set up to play, unobtrusive to the diners but essential to the dancers. Leading them is Frederic Chopin himself, and few here can say they have had anyone better play for their pleasure.

Things will begin with a grand dinner late in the afternoon, with a light supper (mostly consisting of cold meats, bread, and other lighter fare) at around nine o’clock. The selection of food on the tables is enormous. Most of it is meat-based and some of it is simply meat. Roast beef with mushrooms, goose in giblet gravy, herbed chicken, baked salmon, and a whole pig are among the choices. There is some hope for vegetarians, though, with spinach mixed with bread crumbs and cheese on small toasts, turnips (or rutabagas if you speak American), onions, carrots, parsnips, mashed potatoes, asparagus in breadcrumbs, and savory onion and wild mushroom pies. There is hot fresh bread and rolls with butter and heaps upon heaps of small mince pies filled with fruit, molasses, and yes, a little minced lamb. Moreover, there are fresh winter fruits like oranges and mikans and many different desserts, such as Christmas pudding, a rum chocolate dessert, and spotted dog with custard. Sit and help yourself. For a complete list of the food offered, take a look here.

Among the drinks throughout the evening are wassail, tea, hot chocolate (less sweet and much more intense than most modern characters would be used to, made with cinnamon, vanilla, and a hint of cayenne pepper), coffee, brandy, wine both mulled and plain, port, sherry, and gallons of rum punch. Even though the food is fantastic, overseen by Jack Aubrey, the conversation is the point of the game, and who knows who they will wind up sitting beside. At the center of each table is placed a pineapple as a sign of welcome and wishes of prosperity.

There is dancing light as the music itself, with Archie Kennedy and Elizabeth Swann teaching the steps of each dance before striking up the music and letting everyone go to town with it. They are poised and elegant but relaxed and seeming to glide as they demonstrate the motions with an effortlessness that comes with years of practice. They were both raised on these dances and this sort of social function and seem completely at home here. The dancing begins after dinner with the minuets and continues after a light supper with some informal English country dances. Anyone unused to dancing like this may find that it’s harder than it looks, but when one gets used to it, it feels very graceful, beautiful, and…fun! The activity will only end when there are too few dancers left to continue, and will continue all night if possible. As dancers pass each other or move hand-in-hand, eye contact can be made, quiet words exchanged, subtle (or not) messages passed as they spin through the room, or perhaps the room spins while they remain still.

It might depend on how much they’ve had to drink.

Those who do not wish to dance have other activities to participate in. In one corner, card tables are set up with multiple decks of cards stacked up, and there is even a box or two of dominoes and a handful of dice. The tables themselves are round and made of polished rosewood or mahogany. This area is well-lit and on the opposite end of the room from the musicians and dancers, probably as a mercy to the tone-deaf Horatio Hornblower who loves cards but can’t abide music. Here, discreet (or indiscreet) gambling is inevitable. There may be no money here, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to wager.

Are you lingering at the dining tables, drinking and talking loud and laughing with friends, or will you shyly sit and watch the dancing and games and hope to be invited in? Are you sitting quietly alone and listening to the music as your foot taps on its own, or are you unable to sit still and ready to dance all night if they’ll let you? Are you playing cards with a few new acquaintances, or are you hanging on someone’s arm and helping them cheat?

Whatever you do, have fun.

Comments

[herotypical]

"...Breeched?"

There are a lot of possible definitions floating around her mind; none of them are correct.

[simplestgift]

"When a boy begins wearing breeches."

[herotypical]

"...What does he wear before the breeches?"

TOTALLY the wrong icon in the last tag

[simplestgift]

"Gowns." He seems not to think anything is weird about this.

sob i thought he was being sarcasticruel.

[herotypical]

"...Wait. Gowns? As in -- gowns?"

The past is an undiscovered country.

It was supposed to be this one.

[simplestgift]

"Gowns as in gowns. Why?"

[herotypical]

"And at what age does this...whole gown-abandoning happen?"

[simplestgift]

"Depends on the boy, I reckon. Three or four, or perhaps five."

oh my god this tag would not go through.

[herotypical]

"...Huh."

This required some thinking.

[simplestgift]

"I take it young boys wear something different in your time. Can't imagine all the washing you must do."

[herotypical]

"Huh? Wash--oh."

She came to that realization with a slight wrinkle of her nose. "Nope. That's what Pampers are for."

[simplestgift]

[herotypical]

"You know, diapers?"

Maybe he didn't know. Maybe all this glitz and glam of right now is only an antique-y, pretty facade for the past. Maybe it was truly in fact a desolate wasteland of no MTV and no diapers.

Oh those poor parents.

[simplestgift]

"...Is it like a clout?"

[herotypical]

"...Nah. Nothing like hitting someone."

[simplestgift]

"...A clout, Buffy. A sort of triangle of linen cloth, worn on a bairn's bottom to avoid the ruination of his or her lovely little white gowns."

Their glamorous surroundings and this conversation.

[herotypical]

"Oh. An old time-y diaper. I get it."

So classy.

[simplestgift]

"Or a diaper is a new time-y cl--Buffy, I think you did a beautiful thing with the tree. It's like a very large bough of pine, really."

Still a tree indoors.

[herotypical]

Oh. Thank God you are such a gentleman by times, Kennedy. That conversation could have persisted into terrible unclassiness.

"You think? Huh. I'm glad. I'm gonna have to find a decent one for Seven, too."

[simplestgift]

"Why not take this one tomorrow morning?"

[herotypical]

"Hmm. It's a bit big. Do you think it'd overpower the room? 'Cause it's gotta be just right. I don't want no sloppy Christmases."

[simplestgift]

"I don't know, Buffy, doesn't a tree normally stand out a bit in a room?"

...i shouldn't be giggling this much.

[herotypical]

"Wh--hmm."

Dammit. He had a point. Buffy looked momentarily sulky. The kind of sulkiness that could only truly be achieved with happiness. It's a paradox like that.

"Well -- yeah. But it should stand out in a festive way. Not a...gonna eat your house as an hors d'oeuvre kind of way."

I love these two.

[simplestgift]

"It isn't the Halloween moon, Buffy, it doesn't have teeth."

they deserve their own sitcom.

[herotypical]

She took the time to look carefully thoughtful.

"You know, I could almost swear that I read once about this demon that could disguise itself as a tree."