Status anxiety

What your Christmas card says about you (and it’s not usually very nice)

15 December 2007

Toby Young frets about his Christmas card

Not that Caroline takes the whole business too seriously. Last week she read an article on the subject that claimed some people keep meticulous records of the cards they’ve sent and received each year: a red dot next to a person’s name if they’ve reciprocated and a black dot if they haven’t. Two black dots in a row and they’re struck off the list. ‘Can you believe it?’ she said. ‘That’s hardly the spirit of Christmas.’

I knitted my brow and shook my head — ‘Unbelievable’ — not daring to reveal that I keep similar records myself. Last year, for instance, we sent a grand total of 199 cards and received only 87 — a number that includes the one we got from our local Indian takeaway. It took a superhuman effort of will not to write a message at the foot of some cards warning the recipients that they were drinking in the last-chance saloon.

As far as I’m aware, our cards contained no telltale status indicators this year — but, then again, I probably wouldn’t have realised if they had. Like those at the top of our society, I tend to give away more than I intend — only, in my case, it is to reveal just how inferior my status is. On some of the cards I wrote ‘Printed on non-recycled paper’ — a joke that happens to be true. There’s no connection between your social status and how green you are, is there?

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S. S. Pratt

December 13th, 2007 1:21pm Report this comment

Good one, Toby. But what does it mean if one does not send Xmas/holiday cards at all?

somerville

December 14th, 2007 12:13pm Report this comment

Always amusing and sometimes even true (as usual with TY)

Tim

December 17th, 2007 11:12am Report this comment

I think when you name your kids 'Sasha' and 'Ludo', you've pretty much given announced your status.

margaret

December 29th, 2007 4:38am Report this comment

OMG!!! Mine ALWAYS has to have a nativity and a Christian message, almost a sermon - definately no reference to what we have been doing. What does THAT say?