Joyeux Noel: How France celebrates Christmas
candles, lights and tinsel. On Christmas morning, parents often add little toys, candies and fruits to surprise and delight their children.
On Christmas Eve, it’s time for Le Reveillon de Noel feast. Reveillon literally means “awakening.” In a symbolic sense, the Reveillon is a kind of spiritual bugler’s reveille — awakening people to the meaning of Jesus’ birth.
Like most French dinners, the Reveillon lasts several hours — including appetizers, main course, cheese plate and dessert — all paired with wine. Each region of France serves special dishes for this feast: raw oysters in Paris, foie gras in Alsace, buckwheat cakes and sour cream in Brittany. The main course is usually roast goose or turkey.
The Reveillon dinner builds to the dessert, a cake called Buche de Noel (Yule Log Cake) that recalls some of France’s earliest Yuletide traditions. Back in the 12th century, the Buche de Noel was an actual, very large, freshly cut tree, laid on the hearth. The family poured wine, oil and salt over the log while singing Christmas songs and offering prayers. Then the log was set ablaze, using a splinter saved from the previous year’s Yule log. By the 19th century, as cast-iron stoves replaced large kitchen fireplaces, the Yule log was downsized to a small log decorated with candles and greenery.
Today, the Buche de Noel is a cake, often made of a rolled sponge cake, filled with a silky chocolate or chestnut buttercream, and covered in chocolate-buttercream “bark,” with cocoa-dusted meringue “mushrooms” and almond-paste
“holly leaves,” all showered with confectioners’ sugar to resemble snow.
Hours after the Reveillon begins, dozy uncles retire to armchairs while mothers round up eager and exhausted children for the last of the Christmas Eve rituals. In many homes, pajama-clad kids gather around the Christmas tree to sing a song or recite a poem for the family.
Just before bed, children all over France put their slippers by the fireplace or underneath the tree in hopes that Pere Noel will fill them with small gifts. In Burgundy, the children tuck an orange and a star-shaped cookie in their slippers to thank Pere Noel in advance for his generosity. Just before bed, children look out their windows for the “shepherd star” and place small candles on the windowsill to light the night while the sleeping world awaits the Nativity.
On Jan. 6, France celebrates Epiphany — the day the Three Kings delivered their gifts to Baby Jesus — by eating Galette des Rois (French King Cake). In the north of France, galettes are round puff-pastry cakes, usually filled with almond frangipane. In Brittany, galettes resemble shortcake, and in the south of France, galettes are brioche decorated with candied fruit and flavored with brandy or orange-flower water.
Inside each galette there is one lucky charm, usually a tiny porcelain figurine, ranging from Harry Potter to miniature Mona Lisa paintings. They’re called feves, after the fava beans that were the original trinkets. Along with the feve, every galette is topped by a colorful paper crown. Traditionally, the galette is cut while the youngest child at the table designates who will get each piece, so there’s no cheating. Everyone takes careful bites of the pastry until someone finds the feve. The winner gets the crown as well as the trinket, and becomes king or queen for the day.
After a month of celebrations, the French Christmas season hibernates for another year. Regardless of whether you make it to France this year, enjoy your friends, food and family this holiday season.
Rick Steves (www.ricksteves.com) writes European travel guidebooks and hosts travel shows on public television and public radio. Email him at rick@ricksteves.com and follow his blog on Facebook.