CHRISTMAS IN FRANCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20137, 24 December 1928, Page 5

CHRISTMAS IN FRANCE.

To flip Englishman Christmas means " home." To the Frenchman it means something rather different, for the great Christmas feast is. for all who can afford it, a midnight supper taken in a restaurant. This is an expensive matter in Paris, and the reveillon, or Christmas Eve supper, must be arranged for at least a fortnight ahead in the more popular places if one would be sure of a table. The family reunions among the comfortably circumstanced take place round restaurant tables, with jazz bands blaring away, paper streamers flying, and a continuous popping of champagne corks. Countless quantities of pate dc foie gras pies from Alsace, truffled turkeys, and the popular "boudin," known in England as black pudding, disappear in these reveillon suppers. Parisians make a point of staying out of doors from an early hour on Christmas Eve to dawn on Christmas morning. He would be a strange Parisian who did not watch Christmas morning dawn. All night long great crowds parade the boulevards, singing, shouting, and behaving like, children at a fiee and easy party. They refuse to go to bed on December 24. They 1 must hold out until daylight on Christmas Day. Consequently Paris looks like a city of the dead until well after noon on the 25th.

Rut this spirit of irresponsible gaiety is only one side of the French Christmas. Christmas is first and foremost a religious festival, and no foreigner in Paris can fail to be impressed by the fervour and enthusiasm of (he crowds who throng all the churches on Christmas Eve and (he following day. By ten o'clock on Christmas Eve it is useless to trv to get into (lie great church of La Madeleine. Bv that time it is packed to the doors with people waiting to hear the midnight Mass. It is not until after Mass that the revels begin, but religions duty done, the worshippers pour forth info the restaurants or return to their homes, and there in family reunion spend the small hours of Ihe morning in feasting. The midnight Mass. the reveil'"» .Mebralion and the traditions of Father Christmas and the Christmas free ar o the onlv three great survivals of all the host of Christmas customs once current here. T!u! ihes" three show io signs of waning.