Journal: News & Comment

Secrets of excess

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My side of the family goes a bit crazy at Christmas. We don't spend as much money as some do—there aren't usually many big-ticket items under the tree. But when my wife, daughters, parents, aunt and uncle, cousins, and some friends get together on Christmas Eve, in the European tradition, the pile of presents is mountainous.

In part that's because we have a lot of people there, but we also give a lot of gifts—and often re-gifts—wrapped one by one even if that's unnecessary. (I speculated that one reason we rarely give each other jigsaw puzzles is that we'd be genetically compelled to wrap each piece individually.)

The line-of-the-night award goes (as usual) to my five-year-old daughter, who, about half-way through the gift-opening process—which took more than two hours—said:

"Wow! Santa must have more money than Oprah!"

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