The Reinvention of the Tea Party

"If you are cold, tea will warm you.
If you are heated, it will cool you.
If you are depressed, it will cheer you.
If you are excited, it will calm you."
--William E Gladstone

My friends and I have a tradition of holding large tea parties whenever many, if not all of us are together. What started out as a fun get together has become a treasured pastime.


145 years ago, the conventional tradition of the tea party was reinvented by Lewis Carol in his imaginative and strange "literary nonsense" Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The Mad Hatter's tea party, eccentric and odd, changed the way we look at tea parties.

Now, in the 21st century Lady Gaga is bringing the oddness back as she has been spotted out and about in her many strange and expressive getups with a teacup and saucer in hand. I attended the GRAMMY Awards earlier this year and remember easily spotting her all the way from our nosebleed seats. She is never hard to miss. At one point as she sauntered back to her seat during commercial break we saw through our binoculars that she was carrying a teacup and saucer. Of course we didn't find it too surprising because normal is never Lady Gaga's style.
With the recent release of Tim Burton's update on Alice in Wonderland, both Lady Gaga and the Mad Hatter prove that tea parties can be held anywhere, anytime and can be as strange as you want them to be...