Experience the festive season the French way

While we spend a fortune seeking sun or moping around damp markets, our Gallic cousins have Yuletide licked, says Anthony Peregrine

The British Christmas, and its attributes, are terrific. They need embracing with gusto: baubles, high-res knitwear, unexpected cousins, trees, children, carols, Baileys at 10am, turkey for ever after, mince pies and an essential rendezvous with the monarch. I won’t hear a word against it. That said, I have – after decades of living among them – also grown to appreciate the way the French approach Yuletide.

For a start, they don’t do Christmas pudding, the only dessert in the world which has to be spiked with coinage to get people to eat it. More generally, the French go at the festive season less hard. They are not counting down shopping days from July, booking Christmas parties in August or falling out of bars wearing reindeer horns from early November. They have more public holidays than we do, so more opportunities for festivities, meaning that far less is riding on December 24 and 25. These are special times, but not so special that they drive the populace rabid. Normality is

Metz

It is no surprise that Metz, capital of Moselle in the Lorraine region, does Christmas well. It does everything well: contemporary art at the Pompidou Centre, Gothic architecture in one of France’s finest cathedrals, food, Moselle wines, plum liqueur, river trips, living well with a tough past, everything. I can’t understand why you have never been. Correct this over Christmas, which sees the arrival of the sort of epic Yule market that is expected of cities which combine a German and a French past. But Metz’s ace is the outburst of more than 2,000 lanterns which bestow the necessary magic on winter nights. They range from big to huge (some top 12ft), themed from elves’ lantern coverage of polar regions (tourisme-metz.com). Stay at the Hotel Cathédrale (doubles from £86; hotelcathedrale-metz.fr).

Montauban

If tempted by lanterns but in southwest France rather than the northeast, head for Montauban. From December 15 to February 11, the old town hosts the biggest lantern park in Europe. It is prepared by 40 Chinese lantern masters from Sichuanese town Zigong (which sounds like a folk tale in itself ). This year, the festival has been completely revised to include “majestic creatures”, holograms, luminous tableaux, image projection and a great deal else to create an entire fantasy world. I’ve not seen it – no one has yet – but it sounds hellishly enticing (festivaldeslanternes-montauban.com). Stay at the Hotel du Commerce

(doubles from £76; hotel-comercemontauban.fr).

Colmar

It’s obvious that, if Father Christmas ruled the world, he would banish Christmas markets on the grounds of taste. But he doesn’t, so the markets persist with their seasonal attacks of terrifying trinketry and mulled wine. As they exist, you’ll doubtless be going and, if to France, then usually to Strasbourg. It is the oldest and biggest market and, thus, unbelievably heaving. Go instead to Colmar. It is 50 minutes south, has all the historical panache of Alsace, six different markets across the town and, at the Unterlinden Museum, the Isenheim Altarpiece which – with its stomach-churning depiction of ergotism – is the finest antidote to Styrofoam festive excess anyone could possibly need.

Stay at the Hotel Le Marchal (doubles from £201; hotel-le-marechal.com).

iiColmar, in Alsace, with its six Christmas markets, is a quieter alternative to Strasbourg iLocals dress for the festivities in Allauch