How to host holiday gatherings without losing your mind

It was last fall, in the midst of preparing to host Thanksgiving for the first time in my Brooklyn apartment, that I became obsessed with a woman on TikTok who was, in all respects, doing it much, much better than me.

For days, my feed filled up with Cecilia Tolone’s adventures in preparing a Friendsgiving for 18 people in her apartment, which involved a detailed spreadsheet, a week-long schedule, the polishing of candlesticks, and like, actually silver silverware. Not only that, but she was making and purchasing all of the food, compared to my rather wimpy request for all 16 guests to bring either a side dish or drinks.

It helped that Tolone is a professional pastry chef and I am merely someone who loves to throw parties. But there’s something about hosting an actual holiday as opposed to a regular dinner party that’s especially intimidating: Suddenly you’re judging your normal-person home next to the holiday movies of your youth, in which Christmases and Thanksgivings and Hanukkahs take place in sprawling suburban colonials where every corner of the space is covered in poinsettias or flickering candles.

Fortunately, none of your guests are expecting that — and if they are, well, they can host next year. What they are likely expecting is a clean space, a good time, and hopefully a serviceable plate of food. You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars or follow every famous chef’s advice to throw a successful gathering that your guests will enjoy (Anthony Bourdain famously advised making two turkeys, one for showing off and one for serving, which seems excessive).

To find out how, I called up Tolone herself and other pro hosts to chat about how to hold such a gathering, without going broke, losing your grip, or swearing off the holidays forever.

Megan Fitzgerald, who has worked in event planning for 15 years, went viral over the spring for her adaptation of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, but for party hosting. At the bottom, a.k.a. the fundamental requirements for a party, hosts should be thinking about the basic comfort necessities for guests: a clean space, a bathroom stocked with enough toilet paper, and enough water (with enough cups) to go around.

The other tiers — “communication,” “belonging,” “fun,” and “surprise” are the cherries on top, covering things like how to inform your guests of crucial information, making sure each guest has at least two or three people they’ve already met at least once, and creating a theme or an activity to break the ice. (You’ll notice that none of these require a ton of spending!)

Fitzgerald explains that parties often run on a spectrum, where, say, a frat party might have the top elements (surprise and delight), but not nearly enough of the bottom (like, say, a clean couch to sit on). Similarly, “your family friend Gloria” probably has a lovely serving tray and thoughtfully cooked food, but is missing the elements of a party that make it actually fun.

“The people who can host to that level of detail where their cocktail garnishes are stunning, I think that is so impressive,” Fitzgerald says. “But hosting is also so much more than that. It’s the energy of the party, your mental state, and meeting people where they’re at.”

She also advises finding the “why” of your party: Maybe your “why” is that you’re hoping to establish new traditions within your circle, or that you want to reconnect with your religion. Maybe you want your home to feel like a safe haven for folks who don’t have anywhere else to go during the holidays, or you just want to see as many people as you possibly can on your favorite day of the year. “If you know your ‘why,’ a lot of those [hosting decisions] will fall into place,” Fitzgerald says.

“This, I have very strong feelings about,” says Tolone, after I mention what feels to be the standard these days of purchasing cheap Amazon banners, photo backdrops, or themed paper plates and napkins for every event. “There is no, ‘What’s the theme?’ The theme is Thanksgiving, and I’m going to use the same table runners I did throughout my whole 20s.”

Instead, Tolone’s approach is to slowly build a hosting toolkit over time, not on Amazon but at thrift stores. “If you’re hosting Thanksgiving, you don’t have to have everything this year. This year can be for candlesticks, and next year can be for the tablecloth. Hosting is a lifestyle. You will collect things — and thrift, thrift, thrift!”

If you decide to have a theme, the best ones work with the physical space they’re in rather than fighting them (much like with weddings). Therefore, your mood board, whether it’s in your head or living on Pinterest, shouldn’t come from holiday romcoms.

“Hosting in an apartment is so much sexier than hosting in suburbia,” Fitzgerald says. “It can look like tapered candles and everybody crowded together around the kitchen and yes, you’re close together, but you should celebrate that you’re in this part of your life where you’re living in a city and celebrating the holidays. That’s magical.”

Not enough table and chair settings? Try a makeshift indoor picnic. “Just move the furniture, put down a blanket, and sit on the floor,” Tolone says. “If you think it’s fun and you make it cute and put effort in, people are also gonna think it’s fun and funny and cute. It’s only gonna be awkward if you’re awkward about it.”

Daniel Post Senning of the Emily Post Institute also suggests finding small ways to make the party special, like making a toast: “Maybe it’s a signature drink, or a moment where the family gets up and shares what they’ve done in the last year. But think about some things that you could do that would make a holiday gathering where people have made a little extra effort to get there. As a host, you can have fun with that. Reward it, honor it, match it.”

A holiday gathering — particularly Thanksgiving — is one of those times where if you don’t think your pants are about to burst by the end of the night, you feel like you’ve wasted the day. Therefore, making or ordering enough food for everyone to have, at the very least, a heaping first place (and ideally a second) is a must.

Southern Living recommends calculating about a pound of food per person, and half a pound per child. When buying a turkey, make sure you’ve got a pound and a half per person (because the bones and the water cooking off means you’ll be left with about 8 ounces per person). Another way to think about it: Each person should have around 5 bites for an appetizer, 8 ounces of protein, and another 8 ounces of sides total.

It’s also important to remember that just because you have 15 people eating stuffing, doesn’t mean you need 15 enormous servings of stuffing. “You need a spoonful of stuffing for 15 people,” Tolone says. “When you break down the food, it’s a lot of carbs and frozen vegetables, which are actually pretty affordable.”

If you’re still worried you might not have enough food, it might help knowing that Ina Garten thinks that’s chic, actually. “People have more fun if they don’t eat so much they have to be taken home in an ambulance,” she said in her 2004 book on entertaining. “And no hors d’oeuvres; I learned this from the French.”

For wine, stock at least one bottle per wine-drinking person. “I know that sounds crazy,” Fitzgerald says, “but if you’re there for four hours, that’s a glass of wine an hour!”

There’s of course nothing wrong with delegating all of that out by asking guests to bring their own dishes if you can’t shoulder the entire expense. This still requires some advance planning and perhaps a shared spreadsheet. Last year, my biggest stressor was whether the person who agreed to bring the mashed potatoes would flake at the last minute. I could only send so many reminders: How, I wondered, can I be a good potluck host without sounding like a drill sergeant?

As Senning says, “This is the art of good etiquette. It’s about being consistent and persistent without being demanding or disappointed.” He advises regulating your emotional tone as you’re dealing with people. “No matter what the responses are, be prepared and hold yourself accountable that you’re the host, and your mood will set the tone for the whole event.”

Fitzgerald recommends leaning on your VIP guests, which is to say, your most type-A, reliable friends. Send a group text to your VIPs with a list of everything you need, and have them volunteer for their dishes. “Then the people you can’t rely on, just tell them to bring wine,” she says. It’s a good idea for the host to at least supply the main dish, however.

What happens if you’re a terrible cook? “I actually think some forms of takeout are secretly less expensive than cooking,” Fitzgerald says. “If you go to a restaurant that does, like, a vat of pasta, sometimes it can be 70 bucks and you can feed 15 people.”

When Tolone cooks Thanksgiving dinner for her 18 guests, she asks each of them to bring a bottle of wine or other beverage, as well as $10 for the cost of the turkey. “This is definitely a cultural thing. I live in Sweden, and they don’t ever want you to feel burdened by them, so most of the time, people will give me more money because they know how much food I buy,” she says. Though this can be somewhat controversial advice (she says she once got “eviscerated” in her TikTok comments section for it), “you just have to know your audience.”

This also goes for the invites. “In Swedish, we would say hosting is ‘hunting after people,’” she says. “I have different lists of people who I know what time to say, ‘Hey, are you coming or not?’ Certain friends, you have to lie to them and say the party is an hour earlier. If you care about these people, you have to meet them where they’re at. It’s a party, it’s not a moral lesson on timeliness.”

Earlier this year, the New York Times published a piece where they asked dozens of professionally fun and stylish people to give their best party advice. Almost all of them emphasized the same point: Stop stressing out.

“If you operate with the mindset of ‘everything is going to be fine,’ then everything is going to be fine. But if you stress out, then everything is going to stress you out,” one investment executive said. Another said, “When you invite people into your home, you need to let go.”

Other old etiquette standbys can still be useful: “There are certain roles a host plays at a gathering, and you can think of them as marks to hit,” Senning says. “Make sure you greet every person as they arrive, make introductions appropriately, check in with them, and thank them for coming and for any contributions that they made.”

In my own case, the most fun part of Thanksgiving was after dinner, when I was sitting with my girlfriends on the floor around the coffee table, playing silly drinking games and singing to the music we listened to in high school. When all is said and done, “People will forget whether the roast was a little overdone, or whether someone brought this salad or that salad,” he adds. “But they will remember how they felt in your company.”