Biscotti
S6 E12: Season’s Greetings
Everybody Loves Raymond, 1996.
Ah, the annual Christmas letter: that centuries-old ritual in which we gather our families, take a deep communal breath, and attempt to compress twelve months of neurosis into a single sheet of paper that says, essentially, We’re fine. Better than fine, actually.
Marie Barone, America’s patron saint of passive aggression, has decided it is her turn to contribute to this noble tradition. She sits at her kitchen table, polishing sentences the way queens polish crowns, preparing to send a flurry of festive self-praise to dozens of unsuspecting relatives. “Season’s greetings,” she says with the unmistakable undertone of May this letter ruin someone’s day in a small, tasteful way.
Debra enters, radiant with the sort of exhaustion found only in mothers who have, moments earlier, been told they “take a lot of time for themselves.” Marie is drafting a family update, one that includes such holiday gems as:
Debra’s cooking is “coming along,” in the same sense that continental drift is “coming along.”
Marie is bravely helping that poor, beleaguered woman manage her children and household, because generosity is her brand.
And yes, if Debra continues to improve, she might—someday! be considered for a job at Chez Marie, the imaginary restaurant where dreams go to be condescended to.
Debra, understandably, loses the plot for a moment and nearly concusses her mother-in-law with a head of broccoli.
And then, like a herald descending from the heavens bearing an olive branch baked at 350 degrees, Marie arrives at Ray and Debra’s door with a plate of biscotti. The biscotti peace offering: the Barone equivalent of a treaty signing, usually followed directly by the treaty’s breach. “I made them for you, Debra,” Marie says, deploying the exact tone a Victorian ghost might use to apologize for haunting the attic.
Tensions melt. Apologies are exchanged. A biscotto is accepted with the solemnity of a sacred wafer.
All is well.
Until Marie cheerfully announces she is, in fact, still mailing the letter.
This is the emotional architecture of the Barone household: a structure built on forgiveness, then immediately remodeled without permits.
But why does Marie insist on sending this paper grenade? Because her cousin Theresa has, brace yourself, had a very good year. Choir performances at the White House. Roses featured in Good Housekeeping. A liberal, arguably violent use of exclamation points. The subtext of Theresa’s letter: “I thrive, and I’d like you to know that, repeatedly.”
Marie, reading this, experiences the sudden and overwhelming need to prove her own relevance through a carefully calibrated narrative involving botanical gardens and grandchildren.
And so begins the Co-Authored Christmas Letter, an exercise in mutual flattery, light sabotage, and the delicate art of making sure everyone receives exactly as many lines of praise as their fragile egos require.
Enter Robert, who has kept Marie’s last Christmas letter, laminated in a Ziploc bag like a crime exhibit, for ten years. He arrives with his own prewritten bio, a document that describes him as a “meteoric” NYPD bachelor known to “boogie the night away,” which, in Robert-speak, means eating Wheat Thins alone in the dark.
Chaos blooms. Lines are counted. Careers are defended. Ray confesses he twice failed to get a promotion he never talks about. Frank discovers he has wasted an entire decade and is, in fact, merely a “love affair with bacon” in human form. Marie watches the family unravel over a document meant to showcase their successes and thinks, Yes. This feels right.
By the time the emotional ash settles, everyone withdraws consent from the letter except Marie, who cheerfully mails a version featuring only herself and Frank—a Christmas communiqué stripped down to its most essential ingredients, like a minimalist nativity composed solely of the Virgin Mary and a disgruntled shepherd.
And on Christmas morning, the Barone family gathers to do what they do best: laugh at other people’s Christmas letters. The McCarthys have remodeled their living room. They have traveled. They have adopted a 22-lb. dog named Tic-Tac. In the glow of shared mockery, the Barones find holiday unity.
This, the show insists, is Christmas.
Not perfection.
Not glossy narratives of accomplishment.
Just a family, tightly bundled in irritation and affection, roasting other people’s joyous news while their own biscotti crumbs drift softly to the floor.
Make it! Biscotti from Preppy Kitchen