If I threw a party and discovered that one of the guests had leaked the invite to the media, and that, as a result, the invitation had entered the public domain, with a large chunk of the population poring over and dissecting it in excruciating detail, I’d be rather put out.
Not so much with whoever was not invited to the party and identifiably chose to put the invitation out there, but with the person I considered a friend, invited into my home – or to my party at any rate – who saw nothing morally inappropriate in passing it on for public consumption. That one of your carefully selected guests anonymously commits such a perfidious breach, after having accepted and partaken of your hospitality, is really quite despicable.
A few weeks ago, the Prime Minister’s twin daughters celebrated their sixth birthday, and, what do you know, a screen shot of their pink-and-white party invitation to a themed Spanish princesses party, found its way into my Facebook stream. I couldn’t make out every single word, but I didn’t need to, because once I’d read through the long list of comments, I had a pretty good idea what was going on.
The discussion apparently centred on whether or not it was fitting and proper for Michelle Muscat to have hosted her daughters’ sixth birthday at Girgenti Palace – the official residence of Malta’s prime ministers, on the same day that a number of African immigrants were being buried, in the aftermath of their drowning deaths off the coast of Lampedusa, in the second tragedy of its kind that month.
Given the circumstances – the party was being hosted in state-owned property – should the party have been postponed or cancelled altogether? In reality, the online posting was just an invitation and breeding ground (literally) for everyone to rip the party and invitation to shreds on account of an illusory social and moral superiority.
Having hosted 13 birthday parties for my son, I know just how trying and nerve-wracking the entire experience is. It’s not something you decide on overnight either, not least because, at that age, children are constantly being invited to parties, so you have to get your invitation out there at least three weeks before and ‘save the date’. Otherwise you risk some other classmate getting there before you.
I spent many years co-ordinating party dates with other mothers whose sons turned a year older in the same week my son did. To ensure there were no party clashes, there were years when I’d take the first Saturday after his birthday, others when I took the Sunday and a few where I opted for the eve of a public holiday during the week.
Once you’ve finally settled on a date, negotiated, downsized and drawn up the list, decided on a venue, on caterers, cake makers and decorators and what you’ll be putting into those darned loot bags, a month has flown by.
For years, my son would look forward to his party for the whole year before, and once the invitations were packed off into his satchel and sent, as the day drew nearer, his excitement grew bigger and spilled over onto the other children invited. There are always going to be some children you are constrained to leave out, which is another painful part of the process, which only highlights the significance and high regard you’ve placed in your chosen guests.
Cancelling or postponing a party you have been planning weeks ahead and letting down your – and 50-plus – children because of a very unfortunate but sadly ongoing tragedy and humanitarian crisis, which has proved impossibly elusive to the European Union and its leaders for the past two decades, claiming over 20,000 lives – to my mind, would have been more unctuous than proper.
If something positive might have come of cancelling, I’d have expected Muscat to sacrifice her – and all the other – children’s happiness without further ado. Cancelling that party would have achieved absolutely nothing and only added more unhappiness to the lives of innocent and unsuspecting children.
It would be far more useful for Muscat to invite these same children to an African children’s open weekend, encouraging them to mix with refugee children in a cultural exchange type thing, aimed at eliminating racism in the classroom.
This is about the very chavish, improper and malicious behaviour of the snake in the wood pile
I wonder how many Maltese children would turn up to that event? Now that would be ‘morally’ interesting indeed – something definitely worthy of Facebook moral grandstanding post-mortems.
However, this is not about Muscat’s propriety or otherwise, in the same way that posting the invitation was not. This is about the very chavish, improper and malicious behaviour of the snake in the wood pile who did a very ugly, uncouth and dangerous thing, which could erroneously reflect on other invitees who are totally innocent and who now find themselves and their children unfairly implicated by the anonymity of the treacherous social media post.
It’s like inviting someone into your home, allowing them inside your innermost space, letting them be privy to the picture frames, cracks in the wall, broken flushing et al. A few weeks later, when a ‘mysterious’ write-up appears about how you and your partner don’t share the same bedroom and ran out of Scotch mid-party, you’re left wondering which one of your 50 guests could actually do that to you.
Except this is infinitely worse because here, the instigator – who clung onto anonymity for the obvious reason that trafficking and dealing in this sort of back-stabbing filth is not on – is using a children’s party to satisfy a dubious, or perhaps very transparentagenda.
And wonder of wonders, none of the social networkers picked up on this.
michelaspiteri@gmail.com