Christmas in France

The holidays in France have been pretty great so far, and quite different from the holiday season back home in America.  For starters, being away from home has kind of made me realize that Americans tend to celebrate December itself as the holiday season.  In other words, the anticipation and the days and weeks leading up to Christmas are sometimes more exciting than Christmas itself.  Then, afterwards, you kind of get that December 26th feeling, when it's strange to think that everything is suddenly over.

In France, it's just the opposite.  The weeks leading up to Christmas are nothing special, except that they normally involve making plans for the holidays.  Christmas itself begins on Christmas Eve, with a midnight mass and a buche de Noel, a special French Christmas dessert.  Then, the next few days involve travelling to see family, or inviting relatives over, and feasting on Christmas food.  The French don't really have any holiday equivalent to the American Thanksgiving, or any holiday celebrated mainly for food, so Christmas kind of takes that place.  The festivities then last until New Year's Eve/Day, which is much more celebrated in France than it is in America.  It's actually considered sort of a second Christmas, the major difference being that Christmas is a holiday spent with family and New Year's is a holiday spent with friends.

The holidays are naturally a time that can be kind of difficult for exchange students, since it involves missing family traditions and being forced to accept new ways of celebrating a special time of year, and I've heard a lot of exchange students from North and South America complaining that the French holidays are under-celebrated.  Though things are certainly different here, I have to disagree.  The French holidays, like I've already said, are celebrated in a bit of a different time frame, and they are, admittedly, significantly under-commercialized.  There are fewer gifts, fewer holiday sales, fewer holiday commercials, etc., and I've appreciated that.  Though it's not quite the Christmas I'm used to seeing in America, it's nice to see Christmas recognized as a holiday about family.  I feel like that's something that sometimes (not always, but sometimes) gets lost in the stress and extravagance of the American holiday.