White Christmas Effect

Psychologists gave it a name because it kept happening. White Christmas Effect is the name; the happening you already know.

The effect is strongest precisely when nobody mentions it. Awareness does not kill it, but awareness does give you a vote. Without awareness you are not even in the room where the decision is made.

What this concept offers is a pause — one extra beat between what happens and what you do about it. Civilisation, someone said, is measured in that beat.

Consider the chit fund in a small town. It survives not on contracts but on the shame of defaulting before neighbours. Reputation is the oldest collateral in India.

Money is a good clerk and a terrible master; the arrangement is entirely up to us. The name is new; the wisdom stood at bus stops long before either of us.