Lizzie: The Yuletide Blues are a real thing. Elvis had them. Charlie Brown had them. Tim Allen had them in Christmas With the Kranks and in The Santa Clause (during his custody battle). And that’s why we host holiday parties: to shoo away the blues until New Year’s, at which point we party again.

When we last left you, I mentioned that I was planning a tiki-inspired holiday party. The whole thing came to fruition last weekend, minus the fruit tower and the shrimp luge. (It was really quite difficult, veering on impossible, to find a full-body pineapple in Brooklyn in December). Maybe this festive update, for you, is highly anticipated. Perhaps you’ve been waiting, breath bated, to hear how it all turned out. Well, you can unbate.

Kaitlyn: I hate to say this, but I think Lizzie might have been suffering from some kind of pineapple-specific vision problem. The first four grocery stores I went to in search of star fruit, which I wanted for a recipe called “star-fruit chips,” had an obscene number of whole pineapples, which I didn’t want because I was sure that Liz already had the pineapple aspect of the event covered. I distinctly remember feeling kind of taunted by them. Lizzie and I live in the same neighborhood and probably went to the same grocery stores. So my guess is that she was looking a little too hard. One of those “right in front of your nose” things. Like when you stare at the Wordle for two hours on a day when the answer is “THEIR.” Happens to all of us!

Anyway, the fifth store I went to had just one single star fruit mixed in with the kumquats, and this was only the beginning of my problems getting ready for a party that I wasn’t hosting and had no real stake in. After standing in the corner by the yogurts for a while to think, I bought the lone star fruit, two kiwis, a pear, a mango, and a small bucket of plantain chips. I figured I could make a variety of fruit chips and then mix them in with the professionally made plantain chips to create something really impressive and delicious.

At home, I first attempted a recipe for “Whipped Mai Tai Jell-O” from the book The Great Gelatin Revival. The recipe was weird, because it said to boil the alcohol, but I wanted the alcohol to stay (and, later, enter people’s bloodstreams). So I skipped that step. The recipe also called for homemade almond milk, which I ignored, opting for store-bought. To get the mixture to set, the recipe instructed me to, as the name implies, whip it while holding the bowl aloft in an ice bath. This did not work at all (duh). Instead, I put the mixture in plastic shot glasses and put them in the freezer for a while.

Of course, the star-fruit-chip recipe worked for the star fruit but not for any of the other fruits, which had to be thrown in the trash after sitting in the oven for four hours and getting brown but not dry. The paltry 15 star-fruit chips I ended up with went into the Jell-O shots as garnishes. I thought, What could possibly go wrong next? Well, while watching Paddington 2, Nathan and I accidentally ate all of the plantain chips, so I had to send him out for a last-second bag of classic Lays. [Deep breath] No matter what happens, you can always bring classic Lays.

Santa at the beach at Lizzie's house! (Courtesy of Kaitlyn Tiffany)

Lizzie: The pineapple thing … I need a psychologist’s opinion on that. Would you believe me if I said we started our party prep three weeks prior to the big day? I can’t in good conscience recommend it. I cleaned the fridge. I scrubbed a wall. Matt spent many hours crafting paper lampshades to hang over our recessed lights and giant paper flowers to hide the parts of the ceiling where it leaks when it rains.

We had initially planned a menu of mini hot dogs, sliders with caramelized onions, pineapple upside-down cupcakes, and coconut shrimp, but once I realized that we had no savory vegetarian options, I added a cheese ball and cheesy garlic knots into the mix. Matt batched a cocktail called the Jungle Bird (rum, Campari, pineapple juice, lime, and simple syrup). We also had Ghia and a pineapple-flavored THC drink for the sober and plant-curious among us.

If I had to do it over again, I would’ve refreshed the snacks more often. I think our cheese ball ran out of Ritz accompaniments, and our freezer is still full of shrimp.

Kaitlyn: Speaking of ceiling leaks, I need to share something amazing we heard in the fourth meeting of the dinner-party course Liz and I have been taking. One woman, during the show-and-tell portion of the class, explained that her house is extremely structurally unsound. Among other problems, she said, there is a huge hole in the kitchen floor, and to get around it, you have to go down a flight of stairs into the basement and then up another flight on the other side. Before the house is gutted, whenever that day comes, she wants to throw a cave-themed dinner party for which she fills the place with geodes and candles and paper-mache boulders. “Honestly, if my house is falling apart, I might not have money to have an elaborate dinner, but when the fuck else am I going to be able to have an empty house that has a fucked-up design?” she said. Now, that is a truly enviable attitude to carry into 2024. That’s what I’m talking about!

I somehow lost a star-fruit garnish on the two-block walk to Lizzie’s house. But my spirits rose dramatically when we arrived. Christmas in July in December … As we walked in, our jaws hit the floor.

The decorations that Matt made were so, so good—if Jimmy Buffett (RIP) had been present, he would have fainted. Or moved right in! I always love being in Lizzie’s apartment, but the space was looking extra beautiful because of the lanterns, the flowers, and Matt and Lizzie’s enormous tinsel-covered Christmas tree. We all complained for a minute about the wild, possibly illegal pricing of trees this year in Brooklyn, but we quickly concluded that any reasonable person would pay basically as much as they could possibly afford in order to have one. I mean, at what point would it not be worth it? It smells fantastic and is so good for morale.

Re: the coconut shrimp, I’d be happy to go over later in the week to have some.

Lizzie: Imagine a party where the only food is coconut shrimp …

I think there were close to 30 people in my apartment at the party’s peak. People came from as far afield as Philadelphia, New Jersey, and the Upper East Side. There was even one guy who I’m not totally convinced knew anyone at all. He said he was the plus-one of someone who had been planning to attend but was no longer coming. He showed up with a giant backpack that I’m guessing weighed at least 40 pounds, and when I showed him where to put his coat, he kept saying, “Thank you for being so hospitable.” But what was I supposed to do? Not let a stranger with a giant backpack into my house?

You know the John Early and Kate Berlant short Rachel? It was kind of like that, except less thrilling, because he eventually just left without much fanfare.

Kaitlyn: Lizzie and Matt just got a new buzzer—one of those where the person inside the apartment can look at a live video feed of the person outside. The lighting on the stoop is really flattering and makes everybody look hot and famous on the screen. So, for a while, I was hanging out in the kitchen and ogling people, then buzzing them in.

I was also talking to Colin about Ottessa Moshfegh’s Eileen. He had only seen the movie, and I had only read the book. I asked if Eileen is obsessed with her bowels in the movie, and he said no. I was like, well, then, what even happens? (I read the book a long time ago, but I remember her talking about pooping basically the whole time.) I guess I may have buzzed in a mysterious backpack person during that conversation, but I don’t think so.

I did have the honor of buzzing in Colin—not the Colin I was already talking to, but the Colin who lives in New Jersey and knew Lizzie as a child. I told him his pink floral shirt was great, and he said, “It’s my grandmother’s.” The two Colins met because of a confusing moment when I said “Colin” to one and the other thought I was talking about him. Shortly after this, Stephanie saw Michelle walk by and said, “Wait … is that … ?” She didn’t know Lizzie had a twin! If the theme of the night hadn’t been “tiki bar,” it would have been “doppelgängers.”

These paper lanterns were made by hand... by just one man, Matt. (Courtesy of Kaitlyn Tiffany)

Lizzie: Doppelgängers, party crashers … Here’s another trend report from the party: the J.Crew 1988 Heritage Cotton Rollneck™ sweater. Brandon was wearing it, and he received multiple compliments throughout the night. The man-in-a-turtleneck look can go House of Gucci fast, but the roll neck keeps it off the ski slopes, if you know what I mean.

And another: Reindeer Ring Toss. It’s a party game that consists of inflatable antlers that you wear on your head and inflatable rings that your teammate (or opponent?) attempts to throw onto your antlers. It’s actually more challenging than it sounds, because all of your props are essentially slightly heftier balloons. Have you ever tried to throw a balloon with any sort of specificity or target in mind? They want nothing to do with you! They just want to float around without accomplishing anything besides half-heartedly defying gravity.

Kaitlyn: The game looked incredibly hard. I was too intimidated to even try it. But throughout the evening, I did manage to sample most of the snacks. The sliders were better than anything I’ve eaten all year and, unlike every other dinner I’ve had in New York, didn’t cost $70. I ate two. I could have had, conservatively, six. I also had some wontons with spicy mustard, some hot-chocolate-flavored Hershey’s Kisses, and a few cheesy garlic balls. Plus punch, which I spilled on the rug after only a few sips. That’s one of the worst things that can happen at a party—seeming drunk and doing something a drunk person would do, but really you were just being clumsy. Luckily, Stephanie poured half a seltzer on the stain and dabbed it right up.

People kept asking what was in the Jell-O shots because they were a stupid color and tasted like rum and nothing else. Eventually, I started pretending I didn’t know anything about them.

Lizzie: I actually liked that the Jell-O shots were an off-putting off-white color, but Kaitlyn’s right: They really tasted mostly of alcohol, and I don’t think I finished mine.

Here’s a question for the group: Is it a mood killer to tidy during a party? I feel like once the cups and cans start to pile up on random surfaces, you gotta do something about it. Otherwise it feels like soaking in bath water a little too long—time to pull the plug. Speaking of cans, how can we, as a society, prevent the one-last-sip-in-the-can thing from happening? Why aren’t you all finishing that last, warm, flat sip?

Kaitlyn: Around the time that Lizzie began tidying, I guess I was starting to get actually drunk, because I asked five or six people if we could be the first to sit down on the floor and just kind of get that started—“no more standing.”

Russell sat next to me and Lori, and started to talk to us about The Power Broker. He said he has a bone to pick with Robert Caro, because there wasn’t anything about Jane Jacobs in the book. We told him that Robert Caro did write a chapter about Jane Jacobs—as you, reader, may know—and it was cut from the book, because the book was so long that it was going to be literally too large to be bound as a single volume if something didn’t get scrapped. I mean, rebutting this complaint was child’s play for us.

He then said that there should at least have been a chapter about Robert Moses picking a fight and losing. We said, please, Russell, there are chapters about that! I love Russell, but he was being very antagonistic. I lost my voice while talking to him because I had to talk so loud.

Lizzie: I lost my voice too. I realized that once one person starts talking a little louder, everyone needs to talk louder and louder, until we’re basically all screaming to be heard over the noise that we as a group have created. I even turned the music all the way down to combat the noise issue, but it didn’t help. Maybe I need to talk to my landlord about the apartment’s acoustics.

I wish I could remember more of what happened, but the truth is, it’s all kind of a blur. I swear, it wasn’t too much eggnog; it was hosting. Hosting goes straight to my head.

I hope everyone had fun. If you were hoping for a shrimp luge, I can only say: Maybe in the future.

Kaitlyn: Speaking of fun and the future, we should mention that this will be the last issue of Famous People published in The Atlantic. This is it, and we’ve had a ball!

You can keep up with us elsewhere if you’d like, and please continue inviting us to parties. Ideally, we would like to go to the Met Gala.

Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Question of the Week

Since you’ve gamely indulged my inquiries all year, it’s only fair that I give you a chance to ask me anything––pose a question about any issue under the sun, any article I’ve written or argument I’ve made, or any subject at all that you’d like to see me think through. When I answer, space will be limited, so keep your questions short enough for me to reprint them as prompts.

Send your responses to conor@theatlantic.com or simply reply to this email.

Conversations of Note

In a bygone newsletter, I asked, “How much time did you spend with peers in adolescence, and what effect did that have on the rest of your life?” I ran responses from some older readers here. To close out the year, here’s one more batch of responses (edited for length and clarity), featuring a younger cohort of readers.

Andrew in Montreal reminisces about the mid-1980s.

Middle school was surprisingly the happiest period of my life. I had a few friends who would come over every weekend. We’d stay up late playing board games or filming ourselves lip-synching on my parents’ VHS recorder. As we got older we used to sneak out and visit girls on our bikes. We had to plan everything during recess––there were no cellphones and we didn’t want our parents to get wind of our plans on the one family phone.

I’ll never forget the freedom and camaraderie I felt during those years.

Joe graduated high school in 1984, in St. Louis.

I’d be out with friends every weekend and almost every night during the summer and holidays. Video games were starting to be a big part of how we spent our time. But mostly, we just hung out. There were a lot of parties and a lot of drinking but not other drugs—pot occasionally. There were also a lot of couples. So a typical quiet night would be four or five couples watching rented movies at someone’s house, while a wild night would be driving around with a gallon of Brass Monkey (the amount of drunk driving we did is appalling to look back on) and ending up at a house party where police would show up, though no arrests would be made. They’d just send us on our way.

I have a son who’s a freshman in college. He had a couple of steady high-school girlfriends but spent a fraction of the time out of the house with friends compared to me. Online gaming is underestimated for its sociability. He has a lot of friends, or at least acquaintances, through his gaming circle, which ripple out from just his school friends. Also, as far as I can tell, he and his friends drink much, much less than we did. (Yes, I may be fooling myself, but I don’t think so.) I’m grateful because one of the lasting effects from those years was a drinking problem that I struggled with for a long time. I’ll take my kid playing Playstation all night over getting drunk and driving around, that’s for sure.

Ariela is a Millennial in her mid-30s who started homeschooling by seventh grade.

I met up with my friends after they got out of school and worked in retail and hospitality from age 14, where I made lots of friends five to 10 years my senior. I experienced aspects of a classic adolescence––embarrassingly awkward debauchery, crushes, and insecurities. What teenagers face today, however, is significantly scarier than what I faced. LiveJournal was merely an outlet for my writing and Myspace was a way to publicly curate my interests. I didn't grow up on apps that changed my physical appearance, and bullying was something that we could escape after the school bell rang. It didn't follow us into our own homes on an addictive and compact device. I would rather the teens of Gen Z get out of the house, smoke a little pot, get drunk, and know what it's like to be arrested at a pharmacy for stealing condoms than live in a virtual world.

Matt grew up in rural North Carolina in the 1990s, joined the Boy Scouts, and became an Eagle Scout at 16.

There were some cooler kids in our troop who would win the elections to see who would be the senior patrol leader. I was shy, effeminate, and not the sporting type. But I was good at learning things, and Boy Scouts gave me something to be good at: knot tying, camping, hiking, and good citizenship. I had friends there like me. I advanced in rank. There were times that I felt bullied by the cool kids, but I always had my patrol of friends who were laid-back and enjoyed spending time outdoors. I was given freedom to explore my own character. I was taught responsibility and the tenants of the Boy Scout oath and law. I could learn to be me. Maybe it’s too early to know if kids with helicopter parents will come out as responsible adults. Without independence, a kid won’t know who they are until later in the game.

Errol grew up in a small town in a dry county.

My friends and I frequented the local coffee shop College Hill Coffee on nights and weekends. I formed some strong friendships and bonds with them sitting in front of the fireplace with my mandarin-orange-and-cherry Italian soda while we all debated various political points as if we actually knew anything at all. We’d get heated over Bush versus Kerry.

Experiences with them and the random college kids and strangers who would sometimes stroll in prepared me for a life of spirited debates. The feeling of being in a public place with a group of your peers and feeling free enough to announce your disagreement with them is still unmatched in the way of experiences that I’ve had in life. This is why, in my mid-ish 30s, I advocate for being a regular at a bar. Being around your friends and being comfortable enough to say what you believe is vital. It’s also fleeting, as we see with Gen Z and younger. Most important, it never gets old. Talking about stuff with the people around you is one of the greatest pleasures and frustrations in life.

Matt was born in 1984, and recalls spending 75 percent of his unstructured time with friends and classmates during his adolescence.

We spent entire summer vacations outside, riding bikes, getting lost in the woods, swimming, playing sandlot baseball, getting in fistfights and chasing enough spare change for an ice-cream sandwich. I am shocked at the amount of independence and trust our parents gave us, and I’m grateful for it. With age, our interests shifted, but the time we spent was still “quality hang.” Poker, pickup basketball, sneaking out of the house and driving around. Even just sitting around watching TV or playing video games was as a group. I don’t even want to guess at the number of hours we spent playing GoldenEye. If you had to stay home, or you got left out of something, you felt like dying. I am not one of those people who walks around saying “What’s wrong with kids these days?,” but it seems obvious that a certain amount of anomie and self-centeredness follows when kids spend too much time “imperially alone,” as David Foster Wallace once put it, “lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation.”

Tex started ninth grade in 1999.

We all knew car = freedom, and were killing time till we turned 16. We didn’t have iPhones or social media, but we had AIM, which wasn’t all that different from modern instant-messaging apps, except you were sitting at a big desktop computer. People were gossiping, spreading rumors, adding friends, but mostly just having a good time learning how to type. During school we would talk about what happened online last night.

Once you added a username to your list, you could see if they were online or not. I remember staring at the username of the girl I liked. I never got the nerve up to send her a message.

Davis is 21, and graduated from high school in 2020.

I’m reflexively skeptical of the idea that the kids these days just don’t hang out in person. I saw my friends outside of school most days, and we almost never “hung out” through texting or other digital methods—we mostly just used it to coordinate physical meetups. And I was a pretty reclusive, depressed kid—I spent more time alone than most.

If technology affected anything, it was the way we hung out—our default was watching (often admittedly terrible) movies and reality shows on Netflix and then talking over them. If we didn’t have that, I guess we might have had those aimless conversations at a mall or a park. But I think they would have been fundamentally the same conversations.

I was part of the no-dating statistic, but is that a bad thing? I see hand-wringing about this, but do healthy, long-term adult relationships even remotely resemble high-school dating?

I have no regrets there.

Robin was born in 1999.

As a teenager in the 2010s, I was lucky enough to spend almost every afternoon in activities with friends. We would spend every Saturday together under the guise of working in our school’s robotics lab (we did plenty of robotics, but also plenty of sitting in someone’s car in the parking lot). Some nights, we would make it home for 10 p.m. curfew, then talk for several more hours on Skype. That’s where we talked about “deep things” like what we wanted from the world, and when we started admitting, even to friends of the opposite gender, that we thought about sex and had questions about each other’s bodies. I am forever grateful for those friends, and I still talk to several of them regularly.

Despite these close friendships, I didn’t date at all in high school. I then spent most of college feeling paralyzed. It seemed like everyone else knew what they were doing and I didn’t. I spent several years thinking I might be asexual, when really I’m just not interested in hookups. I didn’t have my first real relationship (or lose my virginity) until I was 22.

Luckily, I was never very interested in social media. I had Snapchat for about a year when I was 16, but I deleted it because I could feel myself focusing on documenting my life to show others how much fun I was having instead of actually having fun. In college, I finally got Instagram, years after most of my peers. I developed an eating disorder. I deleted Instagram.

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This newsletter will be off next week. We wish you all happy holidays, and we’ll be back the week of January 1.