I had a girlfriend, a quarrelsome, I confess, girl. She became a big boss. I remember how at her birthday party, one employee, very tiny in position, fingering a handkerchief, with a face white with horror, congratulated her like this: “Let me wish you intelligence and beauty, because you already have everything else” …
Many are afraid of invitations to the notorious «d.r.» precisely because of the need to toast. How to build this vers libre? Congratulation, on the one hand, is part of the cultural tradition, you need to fall for it. On the other hand, a congratulatory speech may also turn out to be a manifestation of spontaneous creativity (see above), which it is better not to resort to without a special inclination.
- What holiday are you dreaming about?
But first of all, it would be good to feel that being able to say toasts is a secular trait that shows a good upbringing and intelligence. Diplomats are taught this, politicians in European universities. And not just like that: a skillful toast makes, in contrast to the often inappropriate gift, a very good impression. As early as the XNUMXth century, students of the Kiev-Mohyla Academy were taught toasts, its students should have been able, as Feofan Prokopovich, the first vice-president of the Holy Governing Synod, wrote, “to decently congratulate friends, speak well-wishing speeches to friends over glasses and solemnly celebrate famous annual holidays” . In the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries, the congratulatory epistolary flourished — it was unthinkable to imagine oneself as part of an enlightened community, light and beau monde without the ability to exquisitely, with an adorning quote, sing the virtues of a birthday man or birthday girl.
- The best gift for the first birthday
Now, in the era of Internet production of congratulatory rhetoric, things have become much more technical. Manufacturing templates fly in heaps at the birthday boy, slaying him on the spot. Every graphomaniac who rhymes health with love is now in business. Excellent trash — verse, parables and sketches — are printed on postcards so that the sender does not strain.
Against the backdrop of this heavy verbal industry, you begin to appreciate the short, dry, nurtured congratulations more. Wishing you health, skillful quote. It’s good, for example, to start with the phrase: “Don’t talk about love, everything has been said about it,” or something like that. Or here’s another hint: you can meaningfully say: «We know what we’re drinking for» — and wink. It makes sense for everyone to take care and find their key to the situation, their password and code.
And the best toast of all time was delivered by Polygraph Polygraphych Sharikov, overturning a stack: “I wish everything!” The most elegant and modern formula, if you think about it. I want everything. Let’s get hot.