Another Christmas letter

I have blogged at least twice about a Toronto acquaintance who writes the most pompous, boring Christmas letters.  My blogs happily deterred her from sending us one for a few years, but this year we were back on their Christmas list.  

We got the letter.  Two pages of the most self-affected and portentous drivel I have read since her last letters.  Why do people turn the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ into an account of their lives over the past year?  No one cares, or at least we don't.  Here are a few excerpts:   

"Cape Town Vice Chancellor Professor blah blah came for tea on the patio in June, after receiving an honorary doctorate from the University of Ottawa.  She'd come from England meeting with Cambridge Vice Chancellor and Professor blah blah with regard to international research.  He now heads the Canadian Institute for blah blah.

"Mary blah blah was given an honorary Doctorate of Sacred Letters by Trinity College in May.  After I had given the citation, citing her work in Vancouver to highlight and redress injustice towards Japanese Canadians and others, Chancellor Bill Graham - tears glistening - expressed gratitude for Canada's Bill of rights that prevents repetition of this kind of suffering."

On a visit to England, she goes on.  "Their living room rug is the same teal blue as the one in my mother's living room.  Contemporary art everywhere.  A red, fruit-laden crab apple bough, hills on the horizon in almost every direction through big windows, magical meals, an owl hooting, a traditional country fair at Frampton Manor on the Severn, where the highlight in the main ring on the polo ground was a terrier race.  Lunch at Burford Garden Centre's open-air café.  

"An 1864 'Southey's Life of John Wesley' with reference to our ancestor, John Fletcher, in the index, thus learning he was of a noble Savoy family, born in Nyon, Canton of Vaux, educated in Geneva of Huguenot background."

It goes on and the name-dropping is breathtaking.  In addition to her grandiose snobbishness, she has the most affected mid-Atlantic accent you'll ever hear -- exactly like that of another affected snob, Margaret Atwood.  (By the way, this woman was born in Winnipeg.)  But the ridiculous thing is she doesn't seem to realize how ridiculous she is!

I should add that we hosted them (B's insistence because of his background with her husband when they were at at school in London) for dinner at the Royal Ottawa Golf Club and up at the Gatineau Fish & Game Club over a weekend, but were we mentioned in earlier missals?  Of course not.  Apparently hooting owls, apple trees and blue rugs are more deserving.   

As an adopted, Heinz 57 hybrid townie from Kingston, I can bear neither pretension nor artifice.  This woman is defined by both.  Me, reading her dreadful and pompous missal:

 

_________________________

A word about the wonderful Vassy Kapelos.  She has moved from the CBC to CTV -- a move most likely triggered by harassment from CBC President Catherine Tait.  I used to babysit Catherine and her sisters and am sure Catherine's management style was nurtured by her overbearing mother.  The mother actually has her own website, which I googled.  

I am sure that President Catherine interfered in Vassy's editorial work and journalistic integrity.  The former would not have been able to help herself.  Happily, CTV is the beneficiary.