Delight Your Guests With my Mom’s Party Games

Maybe it was a Fifties thing. I remember falling asleep to waves of laughter whenever my parents had company. Recently I asked my 91-year-old mom what made her parties so much fun.

"Well," she said, "we would invite around 25 friends over for a Saturday night. And after dinner we played party games." For prizes, she had gone to the five and ten and bought things like funny sunglasses for the men and frilly shower caps for the women.

I immediately wondered whether my friends would buy into the idea of games at my home. But then I though, nah, it's too corny. After listening to my mom's party ideas, though, I decided it would be a hoot to entertain the way my parents did. Here are some of the games my parents played with their friends.

Baby Photo Game 

"We asked each of our friends to bring a baby picture. And after dinner, we lined the baby pictures up on a table where we had numbers written on cards to go with each photograph. Then we gave out sheets of paper to everyone and asked them to identify which photograph belonged to which person at the party. Most of them got it wrong, which was funny, but not as hilarious as just seeing everyone's baby pictures." 

How Tall are You? 

For this game, players ought to be at least in their fifties.

"One night, while we were all sitting around having cocktails and sweet and sour meatballs," my mom explained, "Daddy and I called each friend up, one at a time, and asked how tall they were. Then we measured the person against the wall and made a pencil mark. The men were all a couple of inches shorter than they thought. It was very funny. The women were all sitting around hysterically laughing when the men did it, but then they were shorter too. None of them were ever right. We had all shrunk!"

Musical Hats

I remember it being a cliché that a woman, if she felt blue, would buy a new hat to lift her spirits. Women also bought chapeaux when they felt merry. Over the years my mom saved her beautiful hats, some of which she had made.

There were felt hats, bowler hats, wool hats, hats adorned with feathers, fruits or bows. One was black straw with a brim, ringed with a rainbow of artificial flowers. Another was a cloche, white trimmed in black, that covered the ears. And who could forget the pillbox made with cream-colored pleated silk?

"I had a knitted blue hat, with a big button in the middle that matched a coat," my mom told me. "We were addicted to hats. If you were going downtown to meet a friend for lunch or shopping at Bonwit's, you wore a hat and gloves."

I hope that gives you a good picture of the hats my parents used for the musical hats game.

 "We would arrange a circle of chairs for the men and we put one of my hats on each of them, except for one," my mom told me. "We made it all men, because it was funnier to see them in my hats. We played music, and while the women watched, the men had to pass the hats and put on the one passed to him. Then take it off and pass it again. When we stopped the music, the person who didn't have a hat was out. Basically, it was musical chairs but with hats.

"The women watched and everybody was cracking up. Everyone thought it was a great idea."