Southern Hospitality

When I hear the phrase "southern hospitality", I think of a pitcher of sweet tea, slicing bread and serving it on floral plates with mason-jar jam, bringing warm blankets to be piled atop a freshly-made bed, offering extra toothbrushes and mini toothpaste tubes and limitless re-fills of lemonade.

But more than being stocked with extra bread and toothpaste and blankets and tea, more than making sure our guests are fed and warm, is making sure our guests are celebrated. It would be easy enough to open the door and say "there's food in the fridge and the guest bedroom is clean". That would be decency. Hospitality however, is celebrating their arrival, prodigal-son style. Hospitality is throwing a little party of love, celebrating their being here with us, celebrating them. We want neighbors to feel comfortable, of course, but so much more importantly we want them to feel valued, that their presence is wanted and enjoyed, celebrated. 

And although hospitality is not at all exclusive to the south, I am very proud of southern hospitality. As if me bopping around my apartment with friends, oh so generously saying "you want food? I have mushrooms and canned corn" is representational of the entire southern region of the United States. But Oh, as I have AGED (that's right, I'm almost twenty, a grandmother of four) I have come to recognize, or rather envision, another, more holistic, and very necessary form of southern hospitality. 

In many ways the term southern hospitality, in both the past and the present, is hypocritical. It's an ugly truth that while serving sweet tea and warm bread to one neighbor, we have massacred, enslaved, ridiculed, and rejected another neighbor. And obviously, that's not what southern hospitality is. That's not what any hospitality is. 

For us to practice true hospitality, it's not enough to just show basic kindness to our neighbor, it's not enough to just care for the base needs of our neighbor, and it's certainly not enough for us to just not act violently towards our neighbor. If we're going for true hospitality, we must first welcome, then celebrate our neighbor. With our open doors and warm blankets and hundreds of little toothpaste tubes we must say, we are so joyful you have come, let's celebrate together. 

This true hospitality counters what is perhaps the most popular definition of southern hospitality. True hospitality isn't exclusive, it not only accepts but celebrates guests who most often have been entirely excluded from the faux hospitality. And what a wonderful thing to strive fervently for! True hospitality isn't a charity, it's a gift, a gift both to the guest and the host. 

So party it up! Celebrate! Know your presence is valued and cherished, know that shamelessly and proudly, know you are unconditionally valued, then pass that on! I am so joyful you have come, shall I wash you a mushroom?