The Season for Going Out

The invitation arrives in the first week of December, as it always does, and my first instinct is to check the calendar and quietly hope for a conflict. It is a Tuesday. It is dark by five. I have a coat that is not quite warm enough and a stack of work that will not clear itself. And yet we go, and every year, without fail, I am glad we did.

December is the one month of the year that is built for going out. Why do we resist it?

There is a particular kind of happiness in a December that is slightly overbooked. Drinks on Thursday. Carols on Sunday. The neighbour's open house, the office party, the long lunch with people you have been meaning to see since April. None of it is grand. All of it is, in a small way, a celebration of being together at the darkest point of the year, which is precisely what the whole tradition was invented for.

The trick is to pick the invitations that give something back. Not the obligation that will make you weary. The one that will put you in a room with people you actually like, eating something good, in a house warmer than the street.

One of the small pleasures we have quietly lost is the pleasure of dressing up. Not for a gala. For a Tuesday in December. The velvet jacket. The earrings you never wear. The shoes that are slightly too good for the carpet.

Getting dressed properly for an evening changes how the evening feels. It signals, to yourself as much as anyone, that this is an occasion. It is not vanity. It is a form of respect for the people you are going to see.

The hardest part of any December evening is leaving the house. The sofa is warm, the fire is lit, the book is good. The trick, I have found, is to commit to the first twenty minutes. Almost always the room is warmer than you expected, someone is glad to see you, and by the time you have a glass in your hand you cannot remember what the reluctance was.

And if it is terrible? You can leave after an hour. Nobody will remember, and you will have a story.

Arrive with something in your hands. A bottle, a box of good chocolates, a plate of something you made. It does not need to be expensive. It just needs to say that you thought about coming.

Leave well, too. Say goodbye to the host, thank them properly, and don't linger by the door for forty minutes while the coat is fetched. The art of leaving is part of the art of being invited again.

The season goes past in a blur of car parks and canapés. Choose one evening to slow down and actually notice: the lights on the tree outside the restaurant, the singing, the champagne someone insisted on, the walk home through cold air with a friend who has had exactly the right amount to drink.

That is the one you will remember in February, when the invitations have all been answered and the year has gone quiet again. Not the big night. The small one, with the right people, on a Tuesday.

So send the reply. Say yes. Put something good on, bring a bottle, and go out into the cold of it. December is too short to spend sitting this one out.