"Sip and see" might sound like a drinking game played by teenagers on holiday in Malia (probably before they go out and lose all dignity), but it's actually a sort of christening. Wholly secular, it's a party held in order to celebrate the birth of a baby by quaffing champagne and viewing the nipper in all its newborn glory.
In olden times people called this wetting the baby's head, but the tradition has been up-styled (more money, maybe a theme, definitely a 12-tier nappy cake) to make it more Instagram-able. An American import, which, according to the Times has recently crossed the Atlantic (it shared a boat with pet birthdays and gender-reveals, more on these later), the sip and see is the sweet sixteen of baby parties: larger, glitterier and probably better suited to the American culture of big celebrations for small occasions.
Now don't get me wrong, I do love to party. I even attended them professionally for a little while, reporting for Tatler on events for the Bystander section of their website. Although the fact that I loved to party ironically made me a crap party correspondent. I was too interested in the free booze to concentrate on the semi-celebs who might give me a "scoop" (or whatever the hack word is for catching one of them in the toilets of a nightclub with someone they shouldn't be there with). I would end up blotto, and standing near the kitchens trying to snag as many canapés as possible from the waiters as they came out. Obviously, this made for some sparse copy the next day, though I could always be relied upon to give the food a thorough write-up.
What I found while doing the job was an underworld of parties that the general populace was never really aware of until one of these soirees made the papers (probably thanks to a better reporter than me). Every single night of the week there were launches, balls, birthdays, auctions, private views, fundraisers, fashion shows, openings and pet parades (yes, actually) all officiously marking some occasion or other that most of the people at the party had forgotten about by the time they'd downed their first free negroni. It's not so much that the guests weren't enthused about the occasion or appreciative to the hosts. Quite the contrary. It's rather that, it was almost always the same people going to the events and they'd just reached a certain level of apathy towards all occasions alike. I would look around at a recurring mix of models, musicians and moguls, limply clutching champagne flutes and turning away as the canapé trays glided past and I couldn't help but wonder whether they managed to muster up a bit more joviality at proper occasions, family birthdays, say, or weddings, because most of the time they seemed pretty festived out.
In that same vein, cooing over a baby is all well and good, and if you invite me I'll come and get boozed up with the best of them, but given that it could now be just one in a long line of slightly-pointless-but-well-intended-bashes, it's likely that my heart just won't be in it.
Take gender-reveal parties for example, where guests are invited to come and find out, en masse, the gender of a coming baby by way of coloured sponge cake. For purist parents this means not even knowing the gender themselves, but rather giving a sealed envelope to a baker who makes (predictably) a blue cake for a boy or a pink cake for a girl and covers the whole thing in white icing. The party climaxes when the cake is cut and all is revealed. The moment itself is undoubtedly a special one; but I don't think I'm being mean-spirited in saying that the repackaged, slightly commercialised version is a little withering.
There are now divorce parties, surgery soirees and return-from-honeymoon bashes. In August I'm going to a "staying young" do – it's not the host's birthday, he's just throwing a party to prove he's still young. And when it's time to toast, I'll raise the glass and smile but a little part of me will be thinking bah humbug.
