If camera-shy, smile and decline

Fri., Dec. 17, 2004

Judith Martin United Features Syndicate

Dear Miss Manners: Would Miss Manners care to advise one on how to deal with relatives who persist in sending a video camera around on Christmas Eve and having each family tell about their year?

The problem is that there is a wide variation in income levels in the family, from a multimillionaire to several solidly middle-class working-couple families to a single mother who scrapes to put food on the table.

Would Miss Manners care to speculate on which family member takes the opportunity to expound on the latest African safari, daughter’s private-riding lessons and horse, and son’s new SUV? Judging from how intimidated this middle-class-family member feels, she can only imagine what the single mother must feel. Would Miss Manners care to furnish a response that would sweetly portray the ire this custom invokes?

Gentle Reader: With no intention of defending the cheeky practice of forcing people to perform for cameras, Miss Manners fails to see why you interpret this as a financial report.

How each person wishes to account for his or her year is a wide-open question, which does not require opening financial accounts of purchases made. Surely the relatives who are not rich have some accomplishments or other news to relate, possibly – since you regard this as a contest – even more than the rich ones. At the very least, they are less likely to have a daughter who falls off her horse and a son who crashes his SUV.

This is not to say that Miss Manners believes that everyone must go along with this project. It would be sensible to announce that one is camera-shy but looks forward to seeing the others’ reports.

Dear Miss Manners: With the better stores now giving gift receipts, what is the best protocol when giving a gift? Is it best to include it with the gift?

Gentle Reader: Yes, Miss Manners recommends tucking it discreetly into the tissues.

Dear Miss Manners: While dining out, I asked myself and my dinner companion what would be the proper time during the meal to offer a taste to the other party? Would it be immediately, following the first bite, midway through the meal, or at the end?

Gentle Reader: All three are possible with the right dinner companion, but each has a different meaning.

An offer made after your first taste means, “This is wonderful, and I’d like you to share it.” Offered midmeal, it means, “Aren’t you going to offer me some of what you’re eating?” And at the end it means, “Here, why don’t you have this; I can’t finish it.”

Miss Manners does not advise the second with any but an intimate friend, and the third with any but a spouse.

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