Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Dinner Music?

During my weekend blog perusing, there were of course tons of articles about Thanksgiving and suggestions on how to properly host, or etiquette on how to be a gracious guest, etc. One theme I noticed was the suggestion that there needs to be background music on during dinner. Which make me think...

I'm a huge advocate to have music playing - well, pretty much all the time. I think that some laid back music really improves the mood of pretty much anything you happen to be doing (except, of course, watching TV or a movie or something). But I had never thought to play music during family gatherings, though I would never think to have friends over without setting a playlist.

Well, last mother's day, I had Jeff's family over for brunch. I had been playing music in the kitchen while I cooked (as I always do), and in the rush to get everything on the table, I forgot to turn it off and it continued to play for the duration of the time everyone was here. I didn't really even notice until Jeff's mom made a comment on how nice the music was - it was my "Easy Like Sunday Morning" playlist, which is a pretty eclectic mix of laid back music. I made it after I had friends over for brunch one day and put my main Spotify playlist on shuffle, and it kept playing loud, jarring music. It was kind of funny, but it was pretty annoying; so I pretty much immediately whipped up a chill playlist for that exact kind of occasion. Now the playlist is my favorite to listen to as background music regardless of what I'm doing.

So all of this has convinced me to try playing some soft background music during Thanksgiving dinner this year. I was always hesitant, because people have such opposing views on music; especially when you have a large range of ages. I put together a playlist that I feel is very neutral and includes music that everyone usually likes from various time periods, so hopefully no one will feel alienated. And I can always turn it off if it's bothering anyone. Am I the only weirdo who DOESN'T usually play music at holiday gatherings? I always assume the things I do are the norm, but I realize that that's definitely not necessarily the case, ha!

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