Postmortem: First Day of Warmth

[Jacob Kopczynski]

This past Saturday I ran the Day of Warmth holiday beta^H^H^H^H alpha test.

The goals:
Along the lines of the Neopagan Wheel of the Year, I thought up several seasonal holidays each along the lines of "celebrate the season six month oppostie's qualities". The theme for this one was warmth at the coldest part of the year, which I cashed out as hearth and home and community, with the central aspects being a snuggly celebration of shared community and an oven that never stopped producing baked goods and delicious smells.

The two rituals I planned were:
Wordless Moments: A short period (1-5 minutes, I went with 5 in the end) in which no verbal communication is allowed (except for necessary cooking communication). I planned to have 2-5 across the night, but ended up only having one.

Breaking Bread: People take a sharable baked good and find someone they would like to know better that they have something complimentary to say about. They offer the baked good, and if it is accepted they give their compliments and optionally proceed to conversation. Then those who haven't offered bread to anyone get their turn to go around offering. and do the same.

How it went:

The space was a personal apartment with a large, open living room with several large beanbags and pillows (people call them "floofs"? These.) It was well set up for snuggling and cuddling. I and the primary hosts invited a number of people we knew very well and somewhat less well, to promote new closeness; almost none of the more distant friends decided to attend.

People trickled in over an hour or so, with soup and wassail cooking on the stove. After everyone had arrived that we expected - about 20 - I stood somewhere high and gave an impromptu speech about what rituals I had planned for the night and encouraged people to cuddle to whatever degree they were comfortable with (I believe my exact words included "Cuddling is encouraged. Clothes are also encouraged"), reminded people that the holiday was a beta test, then "declared this holiday open".

A whole lot of food was already around, of many kinds (this was a less good idea that it seemed). Some mac and cheese got made on the stove, we had some pound cake, fruits, etc.

It proceeded as basically the cuddle room of a standard rationalist party with a cuddle room (I'm thinking mainly of Ultraviolet House parties). I tried to find a good time to inject the first Wordless Moment, but kept deferring it to not interrupt good conversations. Eventually I set myself a short timer and after a couple minutes told everyone the ground rules ("No Words", plus a joke or two) and then started it without warning. It lasted five minutes, which passed pretty well. Because I sprung it on people suddenly, some people were annoyed.

It resumed being - from my perspective - a cuddly party, for quite a while. Due to lack of explicit planning, few baked goods were available for the Breaking Bread ritual, and because of the annoyance expressed after the first Wordless Moment I was reluctant to do another.

Eventually I took newly-baked scones, the pound cake, and some focaccia for the Breaking of Bread. This ended up being quite late in the evening, so people had spoken with most other guests and also gotten quite full. I gave instructions and made clear that you could sit out; about a third did. It created conversations between guests, most of whom were basically strangers.

After the Breaking Bread, it resumed being an unusually snuggly party, people began trickling out, and eventually someone retrieved a ukelele and it became a sing-along. Most of the remaining guests were in the Bayesian Choir, so this is not necessarily expected at any other instance.

Reactions:
I solicited anonymous feedback through sayat.me, and got some nonymous feedback as well. The general theme was that the Wordless Moment was very well received (confirming my general impression that it was solid), the Breaking of Bread was poorly timed and poorly structured but potentially useful (unfortunately confirming my doubts, rather than my hopes), the event was not well-planned or well-executed (accurate), but that it felt ritually loaded and intimate regardless (surprising!).

Some specific comments:

Multiple participants expressed that they would like the Wordless Moments to last longer, one suggesting that they'd enjoy it for an hour or more. This suggests that a variant where there are two-three rooms, where one or more is totally wordless for the entire night, would be well received. I think even in that case, there would be value in periods where the entire space is wordless, but probably only 5-10 minutes; perhaps two instances, bracketing the official beginning and end of the celebration.

Dietary restrictions were a complicating factor for Breaking Bread. The historical cultural/religious significance of bread makes it worth the focus, but that does create possibilities of exclusion, especially if the food is focused more narrowly on baked goods, as I think it should be. My preferred solution is two-part: make any ritual around the bread visibly opt-outable, and asking anyone with dietary restrictions who wants to participate to bring things in the proper spirit that they can eat. (This is a concern for gluten-intolerant, keto, and low-FODMAP people.)

My impromptu explicit instructions were a problem to multiple people. I will have a more thought-out script next time and try to encapsulate the core idea with as little "marching orders" as possible.

If I held it again next weekend somewhere else:

Don't bother trying to invite more distant friends. This is a holiday about closeness, and will attract people who already are close, much less so people who wish to become close.

Do detailed planning of what food would be baked and when, and have as much as possible mixed beforehand and ready to be put into a pan and baked. Solicit dietary restrictions but hew to the classic staples for the majority of food unless it's a problem for a large fraction of guests.

Wordless Moment: Keep it roughly the same in concept, but change the timing: starting from when most people have arrived, have it be 10 minutes long and hold one each hour, on the hour or half-hour depending on which is more convenient to start with.

If I want to improve Breaking Bread: Should come at the beginning of the evening, immediately following the first Wordless Moment. Arrange baked goods so that at least one has come out of the oven before the event starts, and a second one comes out warm soon enough after start time.
Focus less on "get to know someone better" and more on "express compliments you usually wouldn't", but avoid talking too much about the explicit goal.

My actual plan for Breaking Bread: Scrap it. Without more people who are medium-distant friends attending, I don't think its goal of promoting new connections is workable. What it did achieve can be done without ritual and isn't enormously valuable. There are other things that can be done with ceremonial bread, maybe something where the group participates in mixing dough, or a single loaf that gets passed around to every hand before anyone can eat any of it. (For some reason the mental image of the dough they give to kids at Bertucci's restaurants also popped into my head.)

Lessons for Other Holidays:

• Just because your plan isn't concrete, doesn't mean it will survive first contact with your audience.
• My instincts for what rituals will resonate are pretty good; if it feels weak or like it's missing something, it probably is.
• Coordinate with hosts to be clear on shared vision for the event.
• Rehearse speeches to get them short and resonant

My next holiday idea is a "mental spring cleaning" holiday some time in April, Tarski Day. I'll start bouncing around ideas in the next week or two.

Jacob Kopczynski

[Raymond Arnold]

Thanks both for doing this and for the detailed writeup!

One thing, I couldn't quite tell from the writeup: was the Wordless Moment clearly advertised from the get-go? It sounded like people might have been surprised by it, but I couldn't tell. In my experience people are much more willing to try arbitrary things in a ritual if they know they're coming. (The takeaway of "do it as soon as a critical mass of people have arrived" sounds like a good one in any case, in part because it establishes from the beginning that this is going to be part of the holiday)

ᐧ

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[Jacob Kopczynski]

Both rituals were mentioned in my "declare this holiday open" monologue, but not described in detail or described before the event. Except to people I'd been discussing my plans with, who were about half of the attendees.