Kitchens
Each of the play’s three acts takes place entirely within the kitchen of one of the couples. The chronological order says as much as the kitchen themselves: things begin in the nice, clean but modest kitchen of the Hopcrofts and proceeds up the ladder of social status through the kitchen of the architect before Act Three ends in the most expansive kitchen of them all, that of the banker and his wife. Kitchen thus becomes symbols of social status, but also serve equal purposes to comment upon gender roles, materialism, domestic alienation and the emotional tenor of the host couple at the time.
The Potters
The Potters are a fourth couple in this progression of Christmas parties who attend the first two, skip the third and are only ever heard as laughter and the buzz of conversation through the doors leading from kitchen to the living room. Jane Hopcroft hints at their symbolic function when she observes of Mr. and Mrs. Potter: “Oh, well, I don't count Dick and Lottie. They're friends.” The point is that the other three couples are not really spending Christmas Eve at each other’s homes because they’re friends, but rather because other people are a means to their individual ends, whatever those ends may be. The Potters are invisible because they are good people with no apparent agenda. And, like good people everywhere, they suffer physical harm at the hands of the property of the schemers in and out of the kitchen and it is only when they are absent that their real value is understood.
George the Dog
For some inexplicable reason, Geoffrey and Eva Jackson bring a dog to the Christmas party being held at the Hopcroft home. Even more inexplicably, having bothered to bring the dog with them, the thereupon decide to leave George locked up inside the car parked outside. Like the Potters, George is heard, but never seen, talked about but never engaged with. The second party is held at the Jackson home so at least that year he doesn’t have to suffer in non-silence barking outside in the four-wheel prison. Indeed, so comfortable is the dog on his own territory that he proceeds to bite Mr. Potter. By the third party the next year George has either been sent to live on a farm literally or metaphorically; his actual location or state of existence is ambiguous.
This ambiguity is central to his status as symbol; George is more of a possession than a pet and his crossing the line in biting Dick Potter has put Geoffrey Jackson in the uncomfortable position of either actually accepting blame for injury to one of the invisible who don’t count or—more likely—pretending to have been accountable. The dog is a symbol of the way those on the rung above don’t think they must be held accountable to any damage their deeds or acts or possessions might have caused to anyone on a lower rung. This symbolism will be made more apparent in Act Three when it is revealed that one of the buildings Geoffrey Jackson designed has collapsed, causing him financial ruin, but not much in the way of accepting moral responsibility which allows for a sense of ambiguity on the question of whether his design is to blame and to what degree.
The Bottle of Gin
The trajectory of Marion Brewster-Wright is a straight line downward from merely tipsy heavy imbiber of spirits to full-blown alcoholic barely capable of making it through a day in which she doesn’t embarrass herself and humiliate her banker husband. Her descent is hardly a family secret and as Mr. Brewster-Wright’s exasperated “Oh my God” attests when Sidney Hopcroft’s Christmas present to her turns out to be a bottle of gin. Sidney, of course, knows full well that the banker’s wife is a drunk and an embarrassing one at that. But by the third Christmas, it is he who stands on a rung of the ladder allowing a view of those below; a group that now includes both the Jacksons and the Brewster-Wrights. The gin becomes a symbol of the Hopcrofts’ newly won social superiority over those who have since fallen to become their social inferiors.
Musical Dancing aka Musical Forfeits
At the final party at the home of the banker and his dipsomaniac spouse, Sidney and Jane suggest—and insist—upon a new game. Sidney calls it “Musical Dancing” but Jane’s term is far more appropriate: “Musical Forfeits.” Quite calculatingly, the role of the Hopcrofts in this game is not of participant, but facilitator. Instead of sitting in a chair when the music stops, the dancers must stop moving and stand in place; the last person to stop dancing is then punished with a forfeit: some object held ridiculously that burdens their ability to continue playing the game. Forfeits include things like holding apple in place beneath the chin or resting a pear on a spoon held in place between the lips. The announced “point” of the game is to win a chocolate Father Christmas. The real point is to humiliate the fallen for the entertainment of those whom they once considered their social inferiors, but now must acquiesce to in order to stop from falling further down through the social strata.
