Should I go to a 'Couples Pajama Party'?

It's not an orgy, just a way to spice up the holidays here in the South

Foco Bama pajamas via Foco Products or Amazon

When did people decide it was a good idea to replace the traditional holiday bash with something called a “Couples Pajama Party”? In my town, just last week, when I received my first invitation to one.

I can’t swear that these parties are sweeping the nation. But my Alabama town is quiet enough that people call it Mayberry on the Bay, and by the time a trend gets here, it’s usually worked its way around the country. A case in point: We just got our first Starbucks.

So it’s a safe bet that we’re not alone, and that “couples pajama party” isn’t a euphemism for “an orgy with spiked eggnog and a dirty Santa gift exchange.”

My invitation came from a group of fun-loving female neighbors who’ve just been getting together each month for long enough that they like to spice things up occasionally.

This time each guest is supposed to bring a teddy bear for a toy drive, so it’s for a good cause.

Even so, I’m on the fence about whether to go. I know some of the husbands, and I’m not sure I want to see them in pajamas. Men here have an intimate relationship with starch—you see them in starched white shirts and shorts at barbecues—and I’d bet some starch their pajamas.

And would anyone want to see me in what I wear to bed? Jill Clayburgh slept in a T-shirt in An Unmarried Woman, a movie I saw at perhaps too impressionable an age, and she looked so good, I took a cue from her. I missed a subtext of the movie: Wear a T-shirt to bed and your husband will leave you.

Not having a plus-one, I can cross that worry off my list. But I can’t ignore that Southern women get into the spirit of their parties. A startling number of members my group wore towering witches’ hats, unbidden, to a party in October.

Those women might show up for the “Couples Pajama Party” in the kind of boa-draped negligee Joan Crawford or Bette Davis would have worn in an attempt to seduce Clark Gable. Or they and their partners might turn up in those matching red-and-white Bama pajamas with reindeer cavorting among Crimson Tide logos all around their thighs.

If they do, I’d be the spoiler in the Instagram photos. So I might sit this one out and drop off a teddy bear beforehand. Other Christmas parties and New Year’s Eve are to come, and the Mardi Gras season begins on Twelfth Night. I’d bet somebody’s already planning a Couples Pajama Party atop a float.