Would you like to party like it’s 1910 every day of the year? If so, you may want to take some notes from Elizabeth O. Hiller’s Calendar of Luncheons Teas and Suppers (1910) in the Kirschner Collection. If you are unfamiliar with the term “luncheon,” Hiller gives this explanation in the foreward:

Luncheons and teas are generally given by and for ladies. And it may be gratifying to know, that the popularity of luncheons seems to demonstrate the fact that it remained for the ladies of America to have evolved the luncheon in all its present form of feminine entertainment. There is no denying that our English cousins gave us the delightful Five O’Clock Tea, which has the charm of informality, and which we readily adopted, and immediately perceived the possibilities it suggested in the way of giving “novel” entertainments in the home.

So there, British ladies. Luncheons were considered “evolved” teas. There is also an explanation of when an afternoon tea should include dancing (although, if you ask me, all afternoon teas should include dancing.)
If you’d like to give luncheon/tea a try this weekend, I’m including the menu for June 29th here:

A Garden Tea

Ingredients

Chicken Salad
Orange Mint Relish
Hot Buttered Rolls
Radishes
Olives
Salted Nut Meats
*Raspberry and Currant Ice
Cocoanut Cake
Orange Sponge Cake
Red and Pink Ox-heart Cherries
Hot Tea
Tea Punch Iced Tea

Instructions

*RASPBERRY AND CURRANT ICE — Make a syrup by boiling 1 qt. of water and 1 3/4 c. sugar 5 mins., add 3/4 c. of red raspberry juice (discarding seeds) and 1 1/2 c. red currant juice, cool, strain and freeze; using equal measure of crushed ice and rock salt. Serve in shallow champagne glasses and garnish with frosted currants. To frost currants: brush perfect clusters of red and white currants lightly with slightly beaten white of egg, then dredge them with coarse gran. sugar.