Small Crowd, Big Mortification

Q:

I’m making a simchah in a few weeks and I’m dreading it. Of course I’m very happy for my son (the bar mitzvah boy), but I know the kiddush at shul is going to be very hard for me personally. This is because my husband davens at a small shul, and I have a very small circle of friends and family, meaning it is going to be a very small affair.

Moreover, we’re in the thick of winter where I live, and I know that some of the people who are invited won’t show up if it’s a cold or snowy day.

In addition, I have a daughter who will soon start dating and I’m worrying in advance that her future husband’s side of the family will be enormous and bring an entire stadium of friends and community members to the wedding, while I’ll scrounge to find 20 warm bodies to invite. I’m mortified in advance!

I have younger kids, too, so I’m going to have to endure this mortification over making a small simchah again and again. Do you have any suggestions that can help me cope?

A:

The “small-simchah crowd” experience happens regularly for many of the reasons you’ve already noted. A small shul naturally means fewer people will be at the kiddush. A cold or rainy day certainly reduces those who will trudge over from their homes or other shuls. Sometimes the season of a particular simchah means that a lot of people will be away (Pesach, summer or winter vacations, etc.). Your small social circle is also a very common factor in the creation of a small simchah.

But here’s an interesting fact — your circle of friends is about the same size as everyone else’s! Research shows that people everywhere only have two to five really good friends, with two being more common than five. You’re not short on friends; you’re only short on simchah attendees.

So who are all those other people at other peoples’ simchahs?

In tight-knit communities they may be neighbors or shul members, not friends who one speaks to regularly, but people one shares a street or institution with. Sometimes it’s people one shares a history with — classmates or people from a community one used to live in.