You can make a sordid thing sound like a brilliant drawing-room comedy. Probably a fear we have of facing up to the real issues. Could you say we were guilty of Noel Cowardice?
Source: Comfort Me With Apples, ch. 15 (1956).
-- Peter De Vries, (Feb 27 1910-1993), US novelist, editor; He was well known as a satirist, linguist, and critically acclaimed for his comic novels The Tunnel of Love, 1954, & Comfort Me with Apples, 1956.