Why is French Christmas different?

In France:

-We don’t go for the super festive Christmas lights outside our houses

-We don’t have Christmas carolers

-We don’t eat gravy or cranberry sauce

But I’ll tell you what we do have! We get to open our presents a day before you do!

That’s right, we open our presents on December 24th!

Even though I know the official day for Christmas, in my heart it’s always been a day before! And my 4 Seattle Christmases have not yet managed to change this. I still open my presents on the 24th, I can’t help it, it’s in my genes!!

In France, we have a great big Christmas Eve dinner that lasts for hours and hours and some more. We take a little break to open our presents and then we start eating again! Perfect excuse to make a little room in our “estomacs” so we can keep eating!

And what do you put in our French “estomacs”? Lots of delicious things!

Appetizers

We usually start with smoked salmon on warm toast with butter and lemon juice

Followed by foie gras on brioche with mache and fresh figs

Main Course

Dinde aux marrons (Turkey with chestnuts)

Desserts

Buche de Noël

Vacherin glacé

Vous connaissez le vacherin glacé? Il faut le goûter c’est vraiment délicieux!

Voici la recette, si vous êtes curieux:

In case you didn’t catch all the ingredients click here

This big dinner is called “le réveillon”. If you ever have the chance to visit France over the Holidays, you might get confused because both the evenings of December 24th and December 31st are called “le réveillon” even though they obviously are totally different, one celebrating Christmas and the other the New Year!

I know it’s sad Christmas is over. But cheer up, a new réveillon is coming our way!