It’s the night before Christmas Eve here in France and I’m starting to slow down to celebrate the season. After a marathon decorating session to get the living room pleasant for our guests, I’ve also been completing projects I haven’t shared with you; painting and covering 5 chairs for example. That and the normal Christmas chaos, sick parents in law and some teacher training days and I need to just stop.
On the last day of school the girls and I dropped round little gifts to businesses and neighbours in the area. Each shop we did so has thanked us on our next visit. These are all the people we first met when we arrived, so are essentially the ones who welcomed us here.
Unfortunately I didn’t make it to the Maire’s office in time, so we’ll drop off something sparkly to help them celebrate the new year after Christmas.
Our little village looks like this right now…
A few lights here and there, mainly the businesses and the town’s Christmas lights. It reminds me of the French town in “Catch me if you can”…
This is our house….
See that bright spot of light almost to the centre of the picture; our house.
In the UK this would be a perfectly normal, dignified display. Here it looks gauche 😂.
Our home looks so different; we moved on the 20th December 2017, so this is our third Christmas here. Just before we moved there was a Christmas market here in the village and we came. Here are my pictures from that day…
And here’s our house…
It’s the one with the for sale sign; it looks so different. No marquee, no bushes and topiary.
I popped into the butchers on the way home from the hairdressers to order our meat. We tend to have a simple but easily made meal Christmas Day and then have the more time consuming turkey dinner Boxing Day. That way everyone enjoys the present opening and not everything happens on Christmas Day.
Of course there’s no Boxing Day here in France, so the butchers is open. We couldn’t get a turkey crown this late (we weren’t sure my husband was going to make it due to his sick parents) and so I’ve ordered a chicken to be picked up Christmas morning.
We’ll be going to the baker’s on Christmas morning itself to pick up our Bûche de Noël. They were very specific about what day it was being ordered for and when we’d need to pick it up; boulangeries work so hard here on each holiday. So we’ll have croissants and pain au chocolat Christmas morning and the cake after Christmas Day lunch.
On Christmas Eve France goes into holiday mode; all is quiet. In England Christmas Eve is the night everyone heads to the pub to get drunk! I’ve been in to Coutances, the local town, on Christmas Eve and they were packing away all the decorations as we drank our hot chocolate. The restaurant was going to be closed over the holiday. In the UK there would be this….
Different world.
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