Do you remember the television special, ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’? The Vince Guaraldi soundtrack made it into something truly special. And as I get ready to celebrate another holiday all these years later, listening to ‘Christmas Time is Here’, I feel nostalgic. Not sad but melancholy.
Christmas feels bittersweet to me now. The feeling grows with each year that passes. As if the weight of all those Yuletides past, the joys and the sorrows, good times and bad, cast a shadow on the present, no matter how happy.
Last year was a sad Christmas. Recovering from Covid, my husband and I spent it without any family other than each other. Food had lost its taste but the dog’s farts still made my eyes water (how is that?), I had no energy and little appetite for any of the usual things. But it was oddly relaxing. The pressure was off. Zero expectations meant that any joy that did come along was unexpected. Oddly, it was sort of fun, or at least memorable.
Two years ago, pre-pandemic, in another lifetime, we were all together for Christmas in Canada. Family, friends, childhood holiday traditions revisited. It was joyful but exhausting. Yet, especially in hindsight, I am so glad we went ‘home’ for Christmas in 2019 because life is short and who knows when we will do it again?
This year, if the French trains cooperate, we will celebrate Christmas together at home here in Switzerland with our children and their grandfather. No matter how bittersweet, I will raise a cup of cheer and savour every last drop.
Tidings to you, dear blog friends! May your fondest wishes come true as we ring out this crazy old year. Bring on 2022!
It has taken awhile but it’s back: my long winter’s nap has given way to a rush of January positivity.
It was easy to feel sorry for myself as the year drew to a close and we found ourselves celebrating Christmas alone in our new home in a still-foreign place, and still feeling the lingering effects of the virus. Nothing tasted like much, the family Zooms were fun but pumped what little energy I had, our Christmas presents for family sat unwrapped under the tree like a reproach: Nope, this ain’t any kind of Noël like you know it. You are a stranger in a strange land who can’t understand a word of what people are saying behind their masks. Who knows how long it will be before people can enjoy getting together again?
I don’t do well with pity parties. After two weeks without leaving home, we decided it was time for a change of scene. So, cleared of our contagion, we packed the gifts into the car and headed to Geneva on Boxing Day. Booked a hotel that could provide a room but alas no breakfast (current lockdown rules) and visited our son and his girlfriend who, like us, had come through Covid and were out of the infectious period. The next day we went to Lyon and had a socially distanced visit with my father-in-law. Gifts were exchanged, champagne corks were popped. I began to feel a lot better.
And it got better. Returning home to Brunnen after being away for two days really felt like coming home. For the first time since we’d moved, with our house sale well and truly behind us, our new place feels like home. Another week went by and we cocooned a bit more, inviting friends for dinner just after new year’s. Gradually my energy — and sense of taste — has returned to almost normal. Getting back to work this week has felt good. And for the first time in months, I am motivated to move ahead on my personal writing projects. I even picked up my German books again.
That’s not to say I haven’t had some bumps. One day this week was one of those hugely frustrating days in which everything seemed to conspire against me. My technology didn’t work. I got lost while driving to the shopping centre, entered the store on the wrong side (Coronavirus-oblige, there are shopping traffic flows) and couldn’t find a darn thing I wanted. Tried to ask for help and got muddled between three languages, not able to utter any kind of clear request even in English, reverting to my automatic responses in French and then attempting to insert a German word here and there to help the poor person who had no clue what I was on about…Gah!
Another frustration has been that, as I was unable to get a positive PCR test, I’d been hoping for a positive SARS-CoV-2 antibody test to prove that I’d had the miserable virus. The first test, one week in, came back negative and the doctor was entirely dubious about the value of doing another: “You’ve certainly had a brush with the disease but probably not enough to generate a proper immune response. You can try again but I suspect it will come back negative, or not strong enough to justify immunity.” But I wasn’t going to give up without a fight, so we did another test anyway. And bingo! Yesterday I learned that it had come back positive. I cannot tell you how much of a relief it is to have proof that my immune system did its job. Which obviously will not spare me from masks, distancing and eventually, a vaccine shot or two. But in the meantime, having at least some immunity for now is another reason to be positive. Don’t we all need as much positivity as we can get these days?
Plus, it snowed this week. The white stuff always makes my heart sing.
Feel free to share at least one thing you feel good about going in to 2021.
Wishing you all a very happy — and above all, healthy — new year!
When you make your home in another country, no matter how much you love it, there is always something you miss. For me it was Christmas.
Everything about the end-of-year holidays in France was different. Starting with the calendar. On Christmas Eve, while we were hanging our stockings and laying out cookies and milk for Santa, my French friends and family were still at table, eating things like oysters and foie gras.
They didn’t have stockings but Santa mysteriously slipped in and left gifts for the little ones while the parents supped. On round three of champagne the adults would wake them to open their gifts and then send them back to bed. At least that’s what people told me: I never saw this with my own eyes. As a parent, and still an overly excited child myself, this was all wrong. How could the kids sleep at all knowing they had new toys to play with?
We always did our own thing at Christmas in France, keeping up the traditions that I grew up with in Canada. In our house we played the traditional songs, stuffed our stockings and ate our turkey on the 25th. It was a compromise of sorts: my French in-laws would join us for a special meal on the 24th but Christmas Day was mine. My French family didn’t care much; they weren’t religious, Belle-Mère always reminded me.
Neither was I, but Christmas, while purely cultural, was sacrosanct. The magic of those mornings as children when we woke at dawn and were kings for a day. I needed to replicate that for my kids and somehow also for myself, even though the older I grew the more impossible it seemed.
Against the protests of my husband (The mess! The expense! What a waste!), we always had a real tree, which I decorated profusely. Unfortunately the French don’t believe in watering their trees so we never managed to avoid it drying out and having all the needles drop before New Year’s.
Candy canes were nowhere to be found so it felt like our stockings were missing something. There were no cinnamon buns for breakfast and I wasn’t up to making them from scratch so we had pain-aux-raisins or panettone. Washed down with a mimosa, no matter how early the hour, a tradition my family in Canada had recently instated. Belle-mère would raise an eyebrow, saying something about how we were starting early — at least until I offered her a glass. There is no better way to start a special day than a champagne breakfast.
It was impossible to get a turkey, at least in the early days, so we would have a chapon or pintade (capon or guinea fowl), which the butcher always assured me would be better tasting but didn’t do it for me. And there were never any leftovers, the best part of the turkey!
My husband could not conceive of a celebratory meal without a cheese course so that was another break from tradition. On the upside, the traditional yule log was always easy: the French ‘Bûche de Noël’ is excellent and in plentiful supply in every pastry shop over the fêtes de fin d’année.
There was rarely any snow in Lyon, although we sometimes got a few wet flakes or a powdery dusting. While the French howled about the horrors of the roads, I privately rejoiced.
On the whole, we did pretty well. We certainly didn’t starve. And I managed to ensure an abundance of wrapping paper and gifts, treats edible and drinkable, that called up the Christmases of my childhood. Most importantly, I created a Christmas tradition for my kids.
What we couldn’t replicate was family and friends. No matter what, I always missed my tribe at Christmas. On alternate years, whenever we could, we went back to Canada for the holidays. Got our dose of fa-la-la and excessive consumption and were happy to settle for a simpler version the following year. And so it goes.
This Christmas is a Canada year for our family (the first in four since we’ve been back) and I am especially happy to be going away. It is pouring rain as I type this, the strikes over pension reforms are ongoing, the UK just voted themselves out by end of January and frankly, I’m done with the news. I’ll be switching off for the next few weeks and hoping to be back with my spirits revived in January.
Wishing you all a happy, healthy and most jolly of holidays. Hope to see you soon in 2020!
For me Christmas is about being with family. Like ET, I want to phone home. But when half (in our case, the bigger half) of your family is on the other side of the Atlantic, you have to make choices. I’ve posted before about feeling pulled in different directions when it comes to the year-end celebrations.
“What if we just forgot about Christmas and instead went somewhere warm by the sea?”
The idea came up when visiting Toronto last year. For once, how about we just forget the turkey and the tinsel and pack a suitcase instead? We have to pack anyway, and spend several hours on a plane, so why not indeed?
This year we are heading to Curaçao, along with several members of my Canadian family. It is a bit of a one-off. Never before have I been so close to South America. Never before have I spent Christmas in a sunny destination. I am curious as to whether I’ll miss the snow (but I rather think not…) but I am sure of one thing: it will be memorable. And the older I get, the more I realize that life is all about making memories.
I am saddened that we could not get everyone in my family to come but heartened that my Dad, who recently celebrated his 85th, will be joining us. House and home in France along with our ménagerie of bulldogs and cats will be cared for by our reliable service of travelling seniors who come to stay while we’re away (a wonderful concept for anyone here who needs a pet-sitter by the way — if you’re interested, ask me for details).
Wishing you all a wonderful end to 2017, wherever you are, filled with love and joy, and a bright start to the new year. Looking forward to catching up again in 2018!
Holiday hugs and grosses bises à tous mes blogging buddies!
Something strange happened when I hit the supermarché last week. The store was busy with shoppers but they seemed oddly unhurried. By the entrance the homeless fellow selling his ‘Sans Abri’ newspaper seemed rather upbeat. I may have glimpsed smiles on people’s lips as they flitted about the aisles, loading bottles and nibbles into their baskets. Une animatrice talked a joyful patter while selling off seafood at half-price as shoppers milled about. I believe I even heard Bing Crosby crooning out a seasonal melody over the sound system.
Qu’est-ce qui se passe? I wondered, filling up my cart as usual (after all these years I’ve never lost my North American habit of stocking up). Christmas is past and the sales haven’t started so what is everyone so happy about?
Then the cashier wished me a ‘bon réveillon’, leaving me scrambling to reply in kind. That was it! New Year’s Eve, the one day of the year you can be sure the French will be smiling.
As I posted way back when I first started this blog, I’ve never quite understood why the French are quite so enamoured with New Year’s. Beyond the big blowout on the 31st, there is real sentiment in France around the fresh start in January, and a feeling that our good wishes must be shared with all those we love.
Having neither party nor family to attend to that evening, we booked a table at a restaurant in town – our go-to solution for le réveillon. The few restaurants that are open on New Year’s Eve near us all offer un menu spécial – a fixed price, multiple-course affair with a glass of bubbly to start. After all the cooking and fussing over Christmas, I was happy to ring out the old year with someone else doing the service.
Ghost of New Year’s past
Who can resist such artful presentation?
Out of respect for our feathered friends, and our daughter, who is studying to become a vet and has become rather militant about cruelty to animals, we had decided to henceforth abstain from eating foie gras. But when the restaurant had already gone to so much trouble to prepare such a lovely plate (shown in feature photo above), graced with truffle and onion compote, it seemed too cruel not to do it justice.
There followed a dish of white fish floating in a lovely sauce, then medallions of beef filet with a few veg for good measure and two desserts. By the time we got to the end I was feeling silly and playing with the table decorations.
How’s that for a bit of bling?
It was a fitting conclusion to a month of over-indulgence. The smiles are still on the faces of the people I pass on the street, probably at least until the end of this week. After a few more wishes of good health, and a slice of galette des rois, quite possibly accompanied by a few more glasses of champagne, it will be time enough to get back to normal.
‘Dans la joie et la bonne humeur’ is an expression that means, quite literally, ‘with joy and good humour’. I’ve often heard it used with a degree of sarcasm, however, referring to the need to pick up the plough and carry on with a smile. New year’s oblige.
FranceSays 
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