'We are having a party this evening' - Why do we use the present continuous?

Why do we use the present continuous?

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I have a sentence: We are having a party this evening. I don't know why we use present continuous. In grammar, we don't use having for possess.

We use the present continuous for things that are going to happen in the future, but which we have already arranged with other people.

The question "Why do we use the present continuous for future plans" is a very good question.

Well, one reason is that English only has two tenses. It has a past tense and a non-past (present) tense. We need to use some kind of present tense construction to describe our plans about the future.

We usually use the present simple, for example, I play the violin to describe things that generally or usually or often happen. We usually use will for predictions or guarantees about the future I will play the violin for you, I promise. We normally use the present continuous for things when we want to show that they are happening now, as opposed to usually Shhh, Bertha's playing the violin.

In English, when we make arrangements with other people, we think that that plan has already started to happen. This isn't such a strange idea. Imagine you see me dressed in very nice clothes and wearing lots of aftershave. You might say "Why are you looking so smart today?" I might answer you "I'm meeting a special girl this evening. We're going out for a meal." You can already see the results of my plan. I've chosen special clothes. I've put on some aftershave. My plan has already started happening. So this plan is happening right now. It started when I arranged to have a date. The process has already started even though my actual date is this evening, not right now. We use the present continuous for things that are happening now. So, when we make arrangements in English, we usually use the present continuous.