- What you consider your best behavior was likely horrendously impolite in the past.
So, your time machine worked, you traveled to the past, and (with the help of our ancient relationship advice) managed to score yourself a historical date. Or perhaps the local lord decided to invite the weirdo from the future to his court.
In either case, you should be on your best behavior. But no matter how impeccable your manners are, you’ll probably upset your host.
Etiquette rules have changed (and continue to change) enormously over human history. Often, this social flux has resulted in… Rather strange rules on how to behave.
Here are 10 odd etiquette rules from the past.
1. Don’t Look at Emperors
Let’s kick things off with the number one rule on how to behave in the presence of a historical emperor. The safest thing to do is not to look at him.
From Ancient Rome to China and Japan, emperors have often been considered divine representatives, if not literal living gods. As such, it’s not surprising that a mere mortal gawking at the holy ruler was disrespectful.
Then again, this wasn’t a hard and fast rule and mostly applied to court settings. For instance, if a Roman emperor decided to parade through the city in triumph, you’d better pay attention to him.
2. Never Comfort Your Children
We can all agree that you shouldn’t spoil your kids rotten. In the past, however, people’s fear of raising spoiled children reached a ridiculous extreme.
For instance, for centuries it was considered inappropriate to comfort crying children, no matter why they were crying. And hugging or kissing your kids? Utterly unacceptable!
But total and complete parental neglect? Now that’ll set the kid straight.
3. Don’t Speak with Your Hands Visible
Ever wondered why Napoleon Bonaparte’s portraits always show him tucking one of his hands in his jacket? It’s due to an etiquette rule from Ancient Greece.
Back in those days, it was considered impolite to speak in an official capacity with your hands showing. So, politicians and philosophers alike would hide at least one of their hands in their toga or tunic — which you can see depicted in some surviving sculptures.
In the 19th century, European painters and sculptors started drawing inspiration from Ancient Greece. And since the Greek masters showed important statesmen hiding their hands, that’s how Napoleon was painted as well.
4. Bring Your Own Utensils
Should you be invited to dinner in pre-18th-century Europe, don’t expect your host to provide cutlery. You should bring your own knife and spoon to the party.
This rule stems largely from the fact that everyone went everywhere with a small personal knife, so there was no need to give visitors cutlery. Additionally, it gave the nobility (who were the people who would get invited to dinner parties) a chance to flaunt their wealth.
Whip out your golden, jewel-encrusted spoon with a pearl bowl and wow everybody. Just make sure you don’t upstage the host.
5. Women Should Have Exactly One Glass of Champagne
Let’s stick to the dinner party setting but turn the clock forward a few centuries. Now, we’re dining in Victorian England.
In case you’re a lady, though, be careful with what you think. It was absolutely unacceptable for women to drink more than one glass of champagne. After all, the weak womenfolk might get tipsy and that’s not something anyone wants to see, right?
That said, you’d better not be a teetotaler. You must drink your mandatory glass of champagne, or you’ll be seen as aloof and impolite.
6. Wipe Your Hands on the Tablecloth
Wipe your hands on the tablecloth during a modern dinner and you’ll be kicked out immediately. In Medieval Europe, however, that was what you should do.
Strange as the thought might be, this was a time before the invention of personal napkins. In the early Middle Ages, people would simply lick their fingers and smear the rest on their clothes.
Following the Crusades, European nobility learned about the tablecloth from the Arabic world. And since wiping your hands on the tablecloth is admittedly more sanitary than doing so on your clothes, that’s what you were expected to do.
7. Spit on the Floor
Alright, so you wiped your hands on the tablecloth, but now you find yourself a bit phlegmy. Well, don’t spit on the dinner table — that was considered disgusting even back in the Middle Ages.
You can turn around and spit on the floor, though. That’s a perfectly proper thing to do.
While spitting onto your dining hall floor seems gross to us, the floor was considered pretty much a trash can in Medieval Europe. That’s also where you were supposed to throw bones and other inedible pieces from your meal.
It’s all good — the hosting noble will just have their servants clean it all up post-dinner.
8. Never Laugh
Remember that famous scene from Goodfellas where Joe Pesci’s character grills Ray Liotta, asking, “I’m funny how? Like I’m here to amuse you?” That’s what you might be facing if you laughed in formal company at pretty much any point in European history.
No matter how funny the story, you simply shouldn’t laugh. It was considered vulgar on the same level as chewing with your mouth open.
If you really can’t hold your laughter back, though, you might be excused for a short, quiet chuckle as long as you keep your mouth shut. Just to be safe, though, it might be better to cover your mouth with your hand.
9. Never Step on a Threshold
Back in Ancient Egypt, you really, really shouldn’t step on the threshold if you were entering a building. Not only would you upset your host, but also anger the gods.
As you may know, the separation of different spaces was religiously significant to the Egyptians, as exemplified by their belief in the realm of the dead. Each home had its own guardian deities and spirits who looked after the spaces beyond the house’s threshold.
Trampling on the dividing line of their realm could be taken as you challenging the household deities’ power. That could bring divine wrath upon both yourself and the owner of the home, so you can see why stepping on the threshold might be considered a bit impolite.
10. Men Shouldn’t Talk to Women (Unless the Lady Speaks First)
Back in Victorian England, women didn’t exactly have a lot of freedom in terms of their behavior. Yet, the ladies had the “privilege of recognizing a gentleman.”
This privilege dictated that a man shouldn’t talk to a woman until she acknowledged him first. What’s strange about this rule is that it was upheld by both men and women of high society — gentlemen would be quick to intervene if they saw another man bothering a lady.
“The lady, in short, has the right in all cases to be friendly or distant. Women have not many rights; let us gracefully concede the few that they possess,” the 1859 etiquette book The Habits of Good Society dictates.
How very gracious of them.