YULETIDE FROLICS

Taranaki Daily News, 17 December 1926, Page 5 (Supplement)

YULETIDE FROLICS

UNRESTRAINED CAMARADERIE. (Specially written for the News.) At Yuletide Paris would be gay though the crack of doom were certain on the morrow. Throughout the whole city on Christmas Eve every hotel is converted into a wonderland with flowers and decorations and giant Christmas-trees ablaze with lights. They are packed with the rank and fashion and beauty of the capital, dining and supping to the chink of glasses, and strains of music, and the sound of merry laughter; and thousands of feet trip lightly itito the hours that herald the dawn of another day. In the streets great crowds surge up and down the Boulevards, frolicking, laughing and producing weird sounds from strange instruments. Theatres and music-halls are full to the doors with hilarious crowds in the highest good humour, looking forward to the reveillon, the midnight revel which is to crown the most jovial night of all the year. Towards midnight the crowds, in boisterous spirits, pour from theatre and music-hall and street into the. restaurants and taverns to enjoy the Christ-mas-eve supper, the climax of the day's gaieties. Indies and demi-mondaines, rich dames of the bourgeoisie and smart shop-girls, men of title and concierges sit and eat together in unrestrained camaraderie. Oysters and foie gras and quails in aspic take the place of turkeys and plum-puddings; and port-wine gives away to champagne. But a great dish with high and low alike is a black sausage —the familiar pig’s pudding of some provincial people in England. Now gaiety reaches its zenith. Wine sparkles, beer foams, the air is full of shouts of laughter and merry jests. Toasts and songs and speeches follow in bewildering succession, until presto’ the scene is changed. Tables, silver, glass and linen vanish as if by magic. The band strikes up a merry dance-tune, and feet trip gaily until morning dawns.