CHRISTMAS DAY IN FRANCE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VI, Issue 308, 14 March 1879, Page 7

CHRISTMAS DAY IN FRANCE.

(From the Daily Si-ir*.) As a nierry-making institution Christmas has much declined in i ranee. There was a time when it was, as in England, the grand festival of the year : hut its degeneracy may be dated from the time when the midnight Mass on Christmas' Eve was interdicted in large cities for political reasons. In Paris an institution which only had its ration d'etre in connection with the midnight Mass still survives in the shape of the receiUon. This means a supper of sausages and black pudding, with concomitants, commencing very late in the evening, and lasting till near daybreak. When people used to flock to the churches to usher in Christmas Day. it was natural that they should desire some supper on their return home, but in these times the reveilfon is nothing else but a little gluttonous carousal among relatives and cronies. During the week that precedes Christmas all the pork-butchers" shops are filled with wondrous displays of pigmeat. French pigs must have a bad time of it between the 10th and 2.3 th December. Besides puddings and sausages there are boars' heads, rolls of brawn, hams, truffled trotters, and all sorts of pleasant things that conduce to indigestion. Not only in the houses of persons who are well off, but in the lodgings of the poorest workmen, it is considered seemly to make a good n-ve'tllon, and if you happen to be invited to attend one of these gatherings among very hospitable persons, your hosts soon settle the question as to how you shall spend Christmas Day—they make you spend it in bed with a bottle of physic near your bolster. I believe that certain families continue the tradition of the '• Christmas shoe,"' which is a much homelier and pleasanter thing. On Christmas Eve the children of a household place their shoes within the fender of a fire-place, and before daybreak their mamma has filled them with sugar-plums and toys. * The children are informed that it is the Angel of Christmas (l'Ange deNoel) who thus stock*, the shoes ; but the juvenile mind is growing sceptical, and it is to be feared that few attach much credit to this legend. In some provincial towns chiefly in Brittany and Provence, it used to be the custom not so long ago for parents to combine and have the services of a merry fellow, who would go from house to house disguised as Father Christmas, and ask whether there was any naughty child who required punishing. The man was armed with a rod, and his appearance caused the most «ied youngsters to wriggle uneasily on their seats. If there weits some naughty boys or girls in n, house, a moment's wholesome terrorising would be effected by the Father's proposal to whip these delinquents on the spot ; but when there had been enough squealing and crying, coupled with promises of amendment, during the new year, papas and manias would beg off the culprits, and a distribution of sweetmeats would ensue instead of the castigation. The Father always carried a sackful of toys and bonbons, and was thus enabled to mitigate the very unfavourable impression he produced on first entering the domestic circle. In some parts of Belgium and Switzerland it is St. Nicholas, not Father Christmas, who is regarded as the dispenser of sweets and stripes to youth ; and his festival falls on the 6th December. One of the principal reasons for abolishing both St. Nicholas and Father Christmas is that the practice of keeping New Year's Day as a great festival of mirth and gifts has now become universal in all French-speaking countries.