I think the best part of Christmas as an adult–even better than getting things like irons, and Le Creuset skillets, and bird feeders–is deciding to celebrate with champagne. (Or sparkling wine, if we don’t want to offend the French.) There was a bottle for Christmas Eve and a bottle for Christmas dinner, and there will be bottles for New Year’s Eve and for my birthday (in one week!).
All the two main characters seem to do in Across the River and Into the Trees is drink champagne–or rather, Champagne, since they’re drinking Roederer Brut 1942. They even bring it on their gondola ride, and say this about it: “It is good for all the ills that all of us have, and for all sadness and indecision.”
Indeed.