The French celebrate Christmas with a huge meal that lasts for hours and concludes with gift opening after Pere Noel (Santa Claus) comes around midnight. As you can imagine, navigating this situation with 2 small children could prove difficult. In our case it was near disastrous as SA was a sobbing mess throughout the evening. Hindsight is 20/20, and I have lots of advice for myself after the fact, but I guess we all have to live and learn. After accepting the invitation to our friends' house for the "Reveillon" (Christmas Eve), I learned that we would be out until after midnight and being the plan ahead mom that I try to be, I purchased an inflatable sleeping bag for SA. The problem was that I had planned to put her down after dinner. I knew that dinner would be served late, but I mistakenly thought that SA would be able to make it through dinner. I'll skip most of the details, but let's just suffice it to say that the main course was served at midnight after we had had the champagne with amuse bouche and entree (i.e. appetizers) of raw salmon, shrimp, oysters, and foie gras!
I had told SA that we were going to be having chicken, so she wanted to stay up to eat chicken. We were actually served "chapon" which is a very special, expensive, festive, castrated rooster. This rooster was served with stuffing made from all of the rooster entrails and ground pork (this was SA's favorite part of the meal) and roasted chestnuts. Then, we had a visit from Santa Claus, and all of the presents appeared under the tree. We all exchanged gifts and then went back to the table for dessert. By now it was between 2 or 3 in the morning and I was so exhausted that I didn't want to taste my own pumpkin pie although I explained the recipe to our curious friends.
We have such precious French friends here. They are so generous and open to us and I am so thankful to have these dear brothers and sisters in our lives. I only regret that I am not able to communicate with them better so that I could express my appreciation to them. Instead I feel that I am always making linguistic and cultural blunders which could be construed as rudeness while at the same time dealing with a tempestuous toddler. Thank goodness for grace!
After going to bed after 4AM, I was ruined for the day of the 25th. I had invited friends for coffee in the afternoon thinking that we would be finished with our Christmas morning festivities by then. I was wrong, and I didn't have time to bake the birthday cake for Jesus that I usually have on Christmas day. Fortunately, my sweet friend, F,(the one that helps me with my French and cherry picking) brought the "buche de Noel" (traditional "yule log" cake) that she made for her family and shared it with us. After visiting with our friends in the afternoon, I was again exhausted. So, the Branyons celebrated Christmas, American style, on the 26th this year.
3 comments:
I feel like I should comment because I know you like comments (everyone does) but I have already talked to you about this. So I am just commenting to say that I responded to your comment on my blog. Also, the books you got Elspeth are the best thing ever. I mean, she LOVES them. They are hers and my favorite gift this Christmas. My second favorite would have to be the glass wine stopper Katie got me when she was in Italy. It is a glass owl, and get this, it is red and yellow! Hooty hoot, 'cause it is super cute!
Amazing how different the traditions and culture are! I thought our holiday was exhausting! What do all the French people do with their little ones on Christmas Eve? Do they all stay up that late?
The baby babies are put to bed- CG is now 3mos, so I put her to bed. There was also a 7 mo. old who went to bed, but there was an 18 mo. old that stayed up until around midnight and then went to bed. The 5 year old and SA stayed up the whole time. The consensus that I am hearing is that French children just stay up generally. I prefer our American Christmas morning tradition when everyone is fresh and has the whol;e day to enjoy one another's company. :)
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