I Wish You Domesticity in the New Year!

While perusing the 1896 copy of Fanny Farmer's Cook Book, I read some entries about how to build a fire, gut a fish and make jam and jelly w/o store bought pectin. Knowing how to do all three, I put my historical hat on, and traveled back in time to where a person of domesticity would need to know how to do those things, and I began to realize that domesticity is learned and is not a natural by-product of being female.

Domesticity does not make me cringe as it does to some people, because I know that domesticity is skill and intelligence working together. And I won't, in our day and time, narrow that statement by saying that domesticity belongs to a particular sex, bank account, or brainscape.

If someone was to offer a definition about domesticity, I would nod graciously if "knowledge of the home" was included in the definition. It is, after all, knowledge of how things work in the home. But knowledge is only one part of domesticity. A true domestician not only knows about the home, but knows how to make the home work for the people who live there. Homes built on domestic prowess are homes everybody wants to visit, live in, be near simply because involved in domesticity is a kind of intelligence and strength that makes people comfortable, safe, and happy.

There are many parts to domesticity, and people who engage it are often good at some parts and not others. Organizational skills like time management, economics, purchasing, public relations, human resources are all part of the domestic domain.

Knowledge of art, math, sciences like horticulture, biology, botany, animal husbandry, nutrition, and electronics comprise a successful domestic's knowledge.

Any domestically talented person should find the world an easy place just because of what that person understands how to live the world without being dependent.

I've always said, a Renaissance person should be able to hold down a responsible job, dress impeccably, write his/her own speech, deliver that speech to any group, and at the end of the speech invite his or her audience home where his or her perfect meal awaits in his or her wonderfully appointed home and brilliant garden with well behaved children and animals while his or her conversation is bright with interests that follow many subjects and flow from a life spent acquiring knowledge.

And that Renaissance person can be said to have great domestic knowledge.

So in the New Year, I wish, for your success and happiness, domesticity.