Origin of the Bachelor Party:
Like so many other awesome things, bachelor parties started in the uber-manly warrior society of Sparta in ancient Greece. Is this madness? No, actually, it wasn’t even close to the madness that occurs in modern day bachelor parties. Compared to a three-day binge involving seven deadly sins and multiple non-mortal ones, the Spartan bachelor party was simply a bachelor dinner. Spartans not only didn’t drink to excess, . In fact, they only used alcohol to punish and humiliate people for non-recreational purposes. They barely did anything for their so-called bachelor parties. The dinner was simply a way to commemorate a soon-to-be-married man’s last day before it was time for him to start making baby warriors. Though we’re glad things got a little more decadent down the road.
But like so many other decadent things, the bachelor party took a turn for the wasted in the Victorian Age. It was the beginning of the Belle Epoch and people were rich, bored, horny, and drunk pretty much all the time. They wore orgy masks, sometimes fellas still got hitched. And when this happened, the stags of yesteryear wanted an opportunity to invite their friends out and do what they would soon not be able to get away with. Because, you see, in this age of salon parties, a friend named Seth the Sodomizer who can chug five flagons of ale through a gramophone horn was typically frowned upon by one’s ol’ ball and chain.
So, they’d go out, get wasted, and in most cases have plenty of sex with plenty of the fairer sex. Good times. This is, more or less, where we still are. But the message of the bachelor party (and the bachelorette party, for that matter) has remained consistent since the blood-soaked, hyper-stylized days of the Battle at Thermopylae. It’s a celebration because your friend is entering a new era of his life, and you want to commemorate that passing. Keep this in mind when he gets drunk and starts complaining to you about how he’ll miss bachelorhood, remind him that the whole reason you’re there is to celebrate his moving on to bigger, better, greener pastures. Then, make him get a hot chick’s phone number to prove he’s not a wuss.
