Two years ago I said that I loved les soldes, France’s biannual sales period.  This year I’m calling it something à détester.  

Why?  Because the government-sanctioned winter sales period begins after the holidays, once everyone has exchanged gifts and depleted their savings accounts.  Because every year I swear that I will skip the event entirely, that I won’t be duped by 50 percent off items that were originally marked up 250 percent, and then I always go anyway, bundling up for the cold streets and then sweating indoors as packs of rabid teenagers elbow me for the pair of boots that I wanted back September, back when they were still in style.  Because after I shove my way out of the stores, exhausted but somehow intact, and at last reach that happy moment in which I review my purchases and congratulate myself on the amount of money I’ve saved, some 19-year-old kid from the Sorbonne sneers at my shopping bags and calls me a capitalist.