Are you expected to arrive right on time? In France, there’s *le quart d’heure de politesse* (*the quarter of an hour of politeness*), aka you arrive at least 15 minutes past the planned time not to pressure the host.
Then we usually stand near the front door and talk for a bit once we’re inside the house, awkwardly standing there while waiting for the host to tell us to make ourselves comfortable.
But I’m mostly interested in the departure. From my experiences, it starts with us saying something like “well, we won’t stay much longer”, but we don’t move, it’s more like a warm-up to the idea we will soon start leaving. Then, like 10-20 minutes later, when there’s a little blank in the conversation, it’s time for a more assured “ALRIGHT, we’re gonna leave you now”, and then back to talking some more by the front door. Is it also such a gradual process elsewhere?
Bonus questions : Are you expected to help with the dishes?
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Turkey: The guests do not tell a time when they’ll arrive. Dinner time is more or less standard, you can expect that they’ll come around then. It would be considered rude to ask them to come at a certain time.
They usually bring a gift, or dessert (bought from a store), or both. Guests coming to dinner empty-handed would be considered rude.
They most certainly don’t help with the dishes. If you are close friends with them, they might help to carry them to the kitchen, but that’s it. Of course, they would insist on doing more, but the host would refuse.
After dinner, there would normally be tea and chatting -leaving right after eating is very rude. Usually after a while, visitors would ask to leave, the host would insist that they stay, and they would make up excuses and leave. However, if the guests are overstaying their welcome, the host can also be proactive and drop some subtle hints. Some people just don’t leave. One can then also try some not subtle hints, but usually you would suck it and wait till they leave.
In Poland I’ve found we ask people what they want to drink before they’ve taken their shoes off.
Also, and this may be a family thing, the food is served at the time people are invited for i.e. invited for 1 and food on the table at 1.02
Bringing things is optional in my experience
The most common format is the polski stół (Polish table) of various zakąski (think tapas crossed with extra sausage and mayonnaise) and a main course alongside it. People can hang out at this table for hours on holidays. The savoury dishes are gradually replaced by mammoth amounts of cake and tea, coffee
Traditionally vodka was served, and mostly drunk by men, but this has been replaced largely by wine in recent years which is consumed more by the women. This again might be a family thing
Edit: washing up/tidying up managed exclusively by the hosts in my experience
In the Netherlands, time is time and if you’re running late, the polite thing to do is call your host and let them know you’ll be a bit later.
Whether you sit down for dinner immediately or spend some time catching up depends on the host and your time of arrival (though the catching up is usually done on the couch), but there is one common denominator and that is that you’ll be offered something to drink shortly after arriving.
The Dutch are rather direct, so departure is whenever either the host or the guest decides to end the evening. Usually it’s the guest that ends the evening by saying something along the lines of ‘It’s been great, but I really have to head home now,’ but it’s also not unheard of to ask your guests ‘I have a really early start tomorrow morning, do you mind if I kick you guys out?’
The cooking, paying for the food and the dishes are exclusively done by the host, students being a notable exception to this rule. Students usually do the cooking and the dishes together, and split the food bill, especially if they meet up in larger groups to avoid serving one person with a large bill and lots of dishes.
In Czechia I’ve never been over for “dinner”. You get invited over to someone’s in the evening plenty of times but the food offered is more like finger food/snacks, with a cheese/chark board and canapes or chlebíčky (fancier open bread sandwiches) with various toppings being the most common. The one exception I can come up with is if it’s a barbecue and then you obviously eat whatever people make on the grill (and get drunk).
In Slovakia you’re more likely be invited for a drink and food is secondary 🙂 .. Plenty of times we just order on pizza or make something easy to consume with drinks, like “chlebicky” or prepare a plate with smoked saussage, bacon, cheese etc.. You arrive at agreed time and leave whenever you or thw host had enough. Sometimes the host will irge you to stay and sleep it off on the coutch 🙂
You usually set a time for when dinner starts here in germany. Let’s say you tell your guests dinner starts at 6pm. Then they should arrive either earlier than 6 or point on 6 at the latest. I’ve literally seen people just start to eat dinner and not wait for guests if they’re late.
In general, you spend some time before dinner just talking and catching up. During dinner as well. If I have people over for dinner, we usually talk while I finish cooking and then just continue to do so while eating. Afterwards it’s usually either stay sitting at the table and drink some wine/beer or play games. (card games in my case).
Duration varies depending on how the guests. If my family visits they tend to stay until 11pm. My friends often stay until like 1am. My gandma leaves at 9pm usually
Personally on leaving, i’m usually experiencing a lot of brexiting. Saying you’re leaving, puting on your coats and shoes and still stay uncomfortably long (while dressed for leaving) before you actually finally leave.
First things first: inviting people over for dinner is not really a thing in Estonia. As in sitting down at a table and eating a full meal from plates with guests.
You invite people over “for a coffee” (+snacks), “for drinks” (+ snacks), “for boardgames” (+drinks+snacks), “for a party” (inc drinks and snacks and maybe salad/pizza) etc.
Arrival: depends on the person a little (and on the event), but usually “at 19” means you arrive between 19.00 and 19.05, people don’t frown if it’s up to 19.10, but by 19.15 the host would have called you and asked what’s up. You are immediately invited inside, shown where you can leave your coat and shoes, maybe even offered slippers etc.
Departure: this really depends on the person a lot, no norms, so nothing seen as very impolite or very polite. But usually you bring up leaving first, then some final discussions (might be still at the original location, might be by the door), then say that unfortunately you really have to go now because you have to get up early or similar, and then you go.
Edit: they usually don’t help with the dishes, but sometimes might. They usually bring a little something: a drink or a cake or some snacks, but it’s not exactly rude if they don’t.
Lithuania: usually if you are going to visit someone the expectation is for the host to provide all the meals and food and what not. It’s probably changing a bit with younger generations, but in general people are embarrassed if they can’t serve at least a proper meal+ plenty to drink. People would often go extra mile on top of extra mile to ensure there’s plenty to eat and drink. If guests bring a gift( e.g. a bottle of wine) it’d end up on the table.
In general if someone’s coming for dinner, it’s a big deal and people make a lot of effort to make sure the whole experience is as pleasant as it can be. So expect lots of various snacks on the table in addition to the main meal.
In Sweden you arrive at the set out time, else you call the host to tell them you are a bit delayed. Arriving late is considered rude, but so is arriving too early. I can’t count the times my dad (and I do this now too, as a grown up) drove in loops around the hosts neighbourhood because we were 15 minutes early and it would have been horrible to arrive earlier than the set time. Just imagine the *absolute horror* of arriving early and finding your host without trousers on!
When you have arrived (on time!), you usually chat a bit at the door, before moving towards either the kitchen or the living room, and you’re offered a drink while waiting for the food to finish properly. Guests are allowed to offer help, but it’s not always allowed by the host.
It’s customary to bring a small gift, like some flowers or a bottle of wine.
Traditionally, a dinner consists of a smaller starter, then the main dish. Beer and wine is common to have with dinner. During big holidays, brännvin (vodka) is had with the food, aside from beer. After comes a dessert which is often accompanied with coffee and liquor.
But, a normal more informal dinner is mainly just a main dish and dessert.
Guests can help with dishes after, but is often refused by the host unless the guests are family.
When it’s time to leave, someone will eventually start to sigh, stretching a bit and say “Nämen såatte”, which basically means “I’m ready to leave”. This can be done by either host or guests. If you have infuriating guests who don’t understand your less than subtle hints, you can politely say, “Det är en dag imorgon också”, which means “There’s a day tomorrow”=”GTFO”.
Sweden’s mostly direct and a bit awkward.
You arrive on time or within 15 minutes of the agreed time. If the host specifically indicates you should be on time, you should be exactly on time, otherwise up to 15 minutes delay is acceptable (but not necessary), any longer you’d be rude. Bringing a present is not necessary but it’s acceptable, especially if it’s the first time you’re visiting that host. A present could be some chocolate or, if you’re fancy, a wine bottle.
The host should ask beforehand about any dietary restrictions (allergies, strong dislikes, etc), and you as a guest should let them know about any problems you might have with food.
Once you arrive, there’s only a short conversation near the door, usually while you’re getting undressed, then you’d go to the dining table. After dinner, there will be some coffee with conversation as well.
Leaving is handled quite directly. The guests leave when they want to, by saying something like “it’s about time for us to head home”, which is an indication to the host that you are indeed soon leaving. It’s then polite to maybe talk for a few more minutes and then you leave. It’s also completely acceptable for the host to suggest that it’s time for the guests to go. Then it’s not some super subtle hint but more of like “I have to get up early tomorrow, we should wrap up soon” or “thank you for coming, but it’s soon bedtime for the kids”. Actual leaving usually involved an awkward minute when the guest is fully dressed and standing by the door, still in conversation.
It would be rude to pressure your guests or hosts. As a host, it’s rude to insist that people stay, as a guest it’s rude not to get going when the host suggests you should. The host handles everything with food preparation and cleanup, unless it’s explicitly a different kind of dinner, like a barbecue where everyone brings their own food.
In Greece when the guests arrive you would most certainly be in the kitchen still cooking, but that’s no accident you want the food to be still hot! You are probably have the main course in the oven, you made dessert the day before that is now chilling in the fridge. All is left to do is cheese and salad. Oh and to make the table!
When the guests arrive they’ll come in the kitchen to ask if they can help. Depending the relationship and the age difference they may help with the bread or the salad. Guests are expected to bring wine or dessert or beers if it’s a barbecue but always something, never empty handed.
After the meal no one is doing the dishes, we just clear the table eating some more, complain about how much we ate, compliment the cook, have a few more drinks and end with the promise that the guest would be the cook next time. (Dishes are done after the guests leave)
Dinner time is very latitude-dependent. Could be 7 pm up North, could be 9 pm down South. It’s usually mentioned by the host, and guests are not supposed to be early or right on time. Half an hour late is still acceptable, but also latitude-dependent and looser in bigger cities. The leaving part is similar to the French one. Hosts are allowed no Dutch stuff, they have to endure guests as long as they want to.
In very small towns, the process is as follows: you’re chilling at home in the afternoon, someone knocks at your door unannounced, then they linger in the house until dinnertime and suddenly you have guests.
most ppl arrive late, it’s common to bring something, usually desert, after you say “well were gonna go” u stay another hour, then when u get up stay at least half a hour. my mothers side heavily exaggerates this, usually arriving 1h late and staying for several hours after saying its time to go. my father’s is the oposite usually not more than 30 mins late and when they say they are leaving they leave in the next 15mins
I’m norwegian and danish.
In Denmark and Oslo, Norway departures in my experience not that drawn out. It’s more about figuring out who needs to get up early and so on, then people just leave.
In Western Norway however, departures practically begin from the time you arrive and saying you’re going to leave is only the beginning of a 1-1.5 hour ritual of chatting, being offered food, being offered to sleep over, being offered sweets and home bakery, having your kids fall asleep, having a drunk relative take a nap in a couch and so on until eventually you make it out the home some time past midnight.
You arrive on time or within 15 minutes (akademiska kvarten).
The host will greet you and get you drinks, the food is usually not finished by the time the guests arrive so some drinks are had in the kitchen.
Dinner can be whatever, often it is a main meal, then dessert and then cheese. Cheese/charcuterie can also be had before the meal. If it is served after it is usually in the living room.
The departure that you described is the exact same here, it can take quite a long time. I think that for me the longest time it took from “I should head home” to actually leaving was about 3-4 hours.
It is not really impolite to say something along the lines of “you don’t have to go home but you have to leave” but it is usually the guest that dictates when the party is over. It’s often decided non-verbally before anything is said.
That’s how It’s always been for me at least 🙂
Fellow Frenchie and your experience with standing awkwardly near the entrance doesn’t resonate with me at all. The departure is absolutely right though, and it’s worse in some families than in others. With my BF’s family you can generally leave about 15 minutes after you first say “we should go”, in mine it’s generally closer to 45-50 minutes. He is really annoyed at this and I completely understand.
Usually guests will be expected to arrive on time, maybe even five minutes early. We have a saying that goes „fünf Minuten vor der Zeit ist die wahre Pünktlichkeit“ which pretty much means „five minutes ahead of time is true punctuality“.
Guests might bring a gift, but a very cheap bottle of french wine will usually do, it‘s more of a sign of politeness to bring something rather than it is about the actual gift.
For the process of leaving I‘d say it‘s pretty much the same as OP described.
We are expected to arrive on time, earlier is extremely impolite. Up to 15 minutes later is okay without informing the host, but it’s a bit dependent on your relationship.
If it’s family or close friends i usually ask if i can help with something, i will also carry the dishes into the kitchen.
Usually there is alcohol involved (beer or wine). At some point the guest refuse a refill, then there is a bit of chatting (10-30 minutes) until the my stand up to get dressed. There is a bit more chatting and then they leave. A subtle way for the host to end the evening is to stop giving out drinks. Another way is to ask the guests about their plans tomorrow, or tell everyone how tired you are.
Depends really.
If you agree to come over at a certain time, it quite often means sometime in the hour.
It’s not unheard of to also just, pop in with no warning if you know em well enough.
You’ll be offered tea, if you reply no, the question gets asked between 1 and 4 more times just to make sure. You don’t say yes on the first one unless you’re famished. There’s a good chance a box of biscuits or chocolates ends up on the table regardless.
Dinner time depends massively on the family, I know people who have dinner at 12, 1, 3, 6, 10 and everything in between.
Leaving is often a whole affair, with seemingly half the meetup being spent talking about heading off soon, which could be anywhere in or around the house.
In Finland we don’t have such a dinner culture. It’s more like “would you like to come over for a cup of coffee” type of thing and even then its super casual, no need for appearances or customs. Though it’s usually rude to come late, even for casual meetings. If you are 5 minutes too early or late, its okay though, but we Finns like to be on time. So call if you can’t make it
There are some customs regarding leaving tho. When leaving there are usually 2 kinds of ways.
More often than not the visitors say something in the line of “well I should be leaving in a bit” and then after about 5-10 minutes of bathroom brakes and last bit of chatting its time to leave. The second way is that the host says something like “oh well, the time has sure flown past”, and the guests should take the hint that maybe the host has something else to do today as well.
Finns tend to be pretty straight forward when speaking, so it’s not to be taken as an offense if the host straight up says “should you be going?”. I have said it as a host and I have been in the guests shoes as well. I really enjoy your company, that is why invited you after all. Just keep in mind that adult people have shit to do, don’t take it personally, we’ll see each other again.
I’m german and I fullfill the stereotype. II’m at least 20 mins early (just not for parties and so on. Never be the first to arrive or last to leave)
But we also have the opposit like my stepdad or my gf. Oh, we have a 30 min. Sure, 5 min before we need to leave I’ll start dressing and getting ready, forgetting 10 things and so on
An leaving is like “So… it’s late already right?”
Swede here. I’m pretty sure we should arrive on time and we don’t help out with the dishes. Occasionally we can pick the dirty plates and go to the kitchen, but it stops there. Yeah, many households have a bigger table in the livingroom.
In England, dinner parties aren’t that common and most people choose to either eat at a restaurant or just order food to the house.
On the rare occasion we do have a dinner party, the host loves to use all the tiny serving dishes that they’ve accumulated over the years but never had any reason to use until now.
Guests usually show up late, even up to like an hour late, which usually irks the host because they’ve timed their cooking for the arranged time, but we’re too polite to say anything.
We don’t linger over food, we eat really fast and then talk once we’ve finished eating. Usually we’ll just have 3 courses at most. It’s not rude to leave food or to eat it all, we just see it as personal preference. Even if it was rude, we’d be too polite to say anything.
After food, we talk for about 45 minutes to an hour, because it’s polite enough to make it look like you didn’t just come for the free food, but not so long that you’re sick of socialising.
When we want to leave, we’ll slap our hands on our thighs and say “right, best be off then” and then stand up. If the conversation carries on, you awkwardly do this again every 5 minutes until the host gets the hint that you’ve had enough. We’d never actually tell the host we’d had enough because we’re too polite.
At the door we’ll say “we should do this again soon” and then it won’t happen again for at least 2 years. The only reason we say this is to make the host feel like we’re not leaving because we didn’t enjoy ourselves, we’re leaving because we want to be back in our own house.
The host does the dishes after the meal. The guests will always offer to help to do them out of politeness, and the host will decline their offer out of politeness too. This interaction happens every time even though we all know what the outcome is, but it’s just become a ritual.
TL;DR: Dinner parties in England are a series of awkward interactions based on the fact that most of us hate too much socialising, but we’re too polite to explicitly say that.
In my experience, the host says dinner will be served at x hours and to arrive any time in the run up to dinner, usually about 1-2 hours. Drinking of wine or beer begins almost at once. In this way, actually being late to the serving of food doesn’t happen since that would mean the person is very very late, and it also means the host isn’t pressured for time.
Very close friends might be invited to arrive a good bit earlier to enjoy tea before drinks and either help setting up or keep the host company while they set up. Naturally it is imperative that wine is brought, minimum one bottle and ideally two.
Dinner is served and gives way to drinking until either around the pre-determined time or until very, very late, depending on the nature of the event and how close the people are. Personally I wouldn’t bother making dinner for people I didn’t expect to stay until 2am or stay the night, and indeed I’d be disappointed if they left within 2 hours of dinner ending.
When people do need to leave, the host makes sure to delay them as long as possible, and one shouldn’t try to leave too quickly. Guests will usually get ready to leave and stay long after they’re prepared; thus it is important that you start the process of decoupling at least 30 minutes before you actually want to go. Personally I have opposed this particular trait and adopted a direct approach – my metric is that when guests or the host start to yawn, its time for guests to go. If they’re staying the night, they must release the host from hosting duties when the host starts to yawn.
If guests spent the night its sorta expected they’ll help clean up, but this isn’t expected at all if they didn’t, indeed it is the hosts responsibility.
In United States… being on time is something that rarely happens. People are either early or late .
At my house we have appetizers and cocktails ready at the agreed upon time .
We typically enjoy a cocktail or two and enjoy a nice appetizer soon after the guest arrive .
Then we finish cooking dinner and serve dinner soon thereafter.
After dinner we have more cocktails and enjoy some interesting conversation and listen to nice music .
Then dessert is served followed by more cocktails and good music . Then we hangout in the living room or the deck or sometimes enjoy a nice bonfire at our fire pit.
Sometimes the guest sleep over sometimes they don’t . Sometimes we all go out to a concert or something… other times we just say goodnight . It just depends on what our plans were .
And that’s the way it goes in New England USA .
It is expected to arrive on time, but is acceptable to be late for up to 15min. Otherwise notice in advance, but in any case the food will not wait for you. When the food is on the table, people will start eating.
When you come, hosts immediately invite you inside and offer you slippers, since we don’t have shoes on in the house. Sometimes tho, exceptions are made, especially for elderly people.
You are expected to feel at ease, like at home. Host shows you to the table and you sit wherever you like. Food is being finalized while the guests are served drinks. For a fancy dinner, guests bring wine with them, which can be an option to drink with food, but usually the hosts offers their own wine, or beer depending on the food. For bbqs with friends, people usually bring their own beer and then trade around a bit.
After the food is gone, usually we drink another round or have a coffee with dessert, depending on how casual it is. In the summer when its casual with friends or family, we drink another round and relax. You can have a conversation, or just phase out on the couch. You can totally have a quick nap if you want. It is common to have at least one hour of relaxation after the food, unless it is lunch in the middle of the day. When the host stops refilling your drinks, or starts cleaning, it is time to go. You don’t have to have any excuses, thank you and goodbye is enough. You can compliment the food, you can make half a plan for some activity together in the future, but it is ok to just leave without it too.
Guests are not expected to do the dishes and offering help might look pushy or intrusive. Dishes are not done immediately after dinner.