Joyeux Noel my friends, it is I Uncle Jacques bringing you roast beefs some Christmas cheer.
So you are wondering what we French do in December, when the snows begin to fall and the little dwarf from Top Gear comes to your town to turn on the twinkly, twinkly lights.
Well unlike you heathens, we French still respect the tradition of Christmas and for us it is more about famillie and goodwill than it is about getting the new I-pod nano.
Oh our traditions are similar to yours, except that in some parts of our country we take the whole Christmas thing a bit more seriously and begin earlier, usually around the first week of December. This is where in many parts of France you can enjoy la f?te de Saint Nicolas. (Saint Nicolas is pretty much your Father Christmas except that thankfully he wasn't re-imagined by Coca Cola at the start of this century.) In some other provinces the festival is called la f?te des Rois and marks the start of the Christmas season. In Lyon from the 8th December is la F?te de lumi?res, a festival to pay homage to the Virgin Mary. At this time the residents of the city each light candles in their windows, in an attempt to turn what is in essence an ugly, ugly city into something a bit more tolerable.
So, it is the night before Christmas and all through the house not a creature is stirring not even une souris. If you visited a French family on Christmas Eve you'd either think you'd picked the perfect time to rob them or you'd find a feast. So either it would be deserted and full to the rafters with pressies and cordon bleu grub because everyone's at Mass or? the party will be in full swing and you'll find them raising the rafters with more champagne than a F1 winner's podium?
Sadly these traditions are falling by the way side and fewer and fewer folks are finding the time to attend a candle lit mass on Christmas Eve or the Christmas feast of La Revillion, but some still persist.
Children love Christmas still of course and Pere Noel (ok so Coca Cola might have done for this guy a little) will turn up and fill their shoes with I-pod Nanos and a tangerine, but there is also a darker side that Coca Cola didn't get round to. Here in France we still have the Anti-Santa. Each year P?re Fouettard turns out to spank bad children with a length of metal piping if they have so much as scraped a C at school.
Of course being food lovers, the main difference between our nations at Christmas is likely to be the menu.
La Revillion, as I mentioned earlier, is the main affair and occurs on Christmas Eve. The meal may begin with oysters or seafood and the main course is likely to be roast turkey, duck or goose. Naturally cheese and champagne will accompany everything and for the grand finale the traditional Yule log in pastry or ice cream.
But despite the subtle differences, I think you'll agree that it is perhaps Christmas that best demonstrates we are not so different from each other after all. So let me wish you a Merry Christmas my friends and of course a Happy New Year?May 2013 be all you wish for!
If one of your wishes is to spend more time in France, check out Holiday Home Advice. It is a great new (ish) site that is packed full of travel guides, superb advice and more from Uncle Jacques with his own special type of French lifestyle tips.
http://holidayhomeadvice.co.uk
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