...co ed, likkered up, and lots of laughs.

See, to me, that's just a party. A shower is specifically focused on the woman who's about to undergo marriage/childbirth. She's surrounded by her friends and family, who are pledging their support of her in her coming difficult times by bringing her sacrifices of their time and money in the form of gifts, and by playing the sort of silly games they used to play in her childhood, which is now over.

My feeling toward showers might be soured by experience with a particularly greedy and self-centered friend.

I've been to a few baby showers, and with one exception (where we were supposed to taste baby food and guess what the ingredients were), the games we played were no more silly than the games that group of people usually played at parties. (We were math grad students. Our idea of fun may have been different than most.) We did one where names of famous mothers were taped to our backs, and we had to ask people questions to try to figure out who we were, and someone bought a big stack of onesies that we decorated with fabric paint. (There were maybe two normal baby clothing decorations among the bunch. The rest was math stuff.) But gatherings with this bunch of people typically involved board games and stuff like that, so these just seemed like normal parties with different games.

See, to me, that's just a party

Well it was party at which we gave the parents to be lots of baby stuff presents. That's what made it a shower. And it we also invited a ton of people who normally wouldn't travel several hundred miles for a plain ol' party. And that's why my husband was there from Chicago.

I'm doing a shower (bridal) next weekend for my best friend - I missed the one that the ladies from her church threw because it was F2F weekend (so not regretting it, I heard about some of the games, plus, y'know, F2F). No guys or liquor (given the guest of honor and the crowd in question), but since I'm in charge, no games with stains or tasting anything - only the kinds of games that wouldn't irritate the crap out of me, and since I'm hostess I officially won't be playing, so my ugly competitive (even at games that don't matter) side won't come out. But no more than 10-15 minutes for games. Mostly noshing, chatting, and some presents. And hopefully everyone enjoying themselves and not being annoyed by forced frivolity.

It almost feels like showers are being defined by them sucking. You tell me that V's getting close to popping her sprog, and everyone's to come and give her kid-related gifts and celebrate the upcoming mommyhood and have a general rollicking good time (because we're all very happy she's having a kid), I call that a shower. I don't see how it fails the sniff test. Some have games, some don't, and like any party nothing's perfect, but they average fun, like most gatherings of or for people I love tend to, in times of joy.

Lots of health ma for your sister, smonster.

I have a knee-jerk bad reaction to baby showers, but that's because the last two I was involved with were drama-fueled stress bombs.

When my friend H was pregnant with her first we threw her a Tupperware Shower.

By which I mean a Pure Romance party. Our friend N hosted the party at her house, but we made H the hostess so she got the free stuff from the purchses of the party comers. And we had baby-themed cocktails, lots of yummy finger foods, and H just wanted diapers since her mother and her MIL each threw a shower already. We made onesies with iron ons (mostly Ramones and funny song lyrics) and hung out. It was fantastic.

Most of the showers I have heard of lately have been the co-ed likkered up variety. No games except normal party type games of horseshoes or billiards or whatever. And baby/wedding type presents. More like adult birthday parties.

Vortex, I'm just thinking that if you did call it a shower, wouldn't that be a good thing?

I deliberately did not because I didn't want expectations of typical shower activities (i.e tasting baby food). I wanted people to come wish my friend well, and bring a gift if they wanted to.