On a trip to the picturesque and somewhat deserted Parisian suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, I fell in love with a six-year-old boy, the little cousin of my French Goddess. He spent ten minutes eating his soft-boiled egg from the rooster-shaped egg stand that his older sister had hand-painted. After cracking and laboriously picking away at the top of the egg shell (with my assistance), he dunked his delicately buttered baguette pieces, into the orange center of the egg and scooped out the contents little by little. Gleeful at his success in cleaning out the egg shell, he presented it to his mother. Most American children miss out on this elaborate procedure typical of European households.

I arrived back to New England from Paris to find a stack of Waspy holiday cards in my mother’s kitchen. The tradition of circulating family Christmas cards always manages to bring out a vanity and tackiness in people that goes otherwise undetected throughout the rest of the year. Below is a sampling from the most egregious ones.

Gauche Things To Do In Your Christmas Card:

1. Covering the front of the card with collage-style cutouts of the heads of your family members, the largest one being the newest born baby. This gives the card a startling high-school-year-book effect and makes the people appear disembodied.

2. Commencing the inside letter with the words, “What an exciting year for the ____s, as you see.” If the offensive cover (and interior) collage of your family and a giant looming baby head is evidence of your “exciting year,” I’d rather not read onwards.

3. Using any of the following terms in the body of the letter: Wall Street, nuptials, our newest addition, University of _____, skeet shooting, summer renting, empty nesters, start up company, Alpha Chi Ro, VP, bathroom renovations, tennis, golf carts, family clambake, gorgeous bridesmaid, detached retina, strategic real estate investment. Note: all of the previous terms were direct quotations from this year’s batch.

4. Formatting the letter as an “Alphabet Soup” and mentioning each “significant” event at least three times so as to come up with twenty-six sentences.

Wasps have a special dialect sometimes incomprehensible to the untrained ear. The penchant for using the word “golden” as a noun (especially in describing the health, arrival, or death of your retrievers), and the overuse of the word “summer” as a verb, are just two fine examples of this tradition. I miss France. I wonder if they do this sort of thing over there.

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