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Our Man in Paris: Christmas abroad

John Lichfield
Monday 23 December 2002 01:00 GMT
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In Charles Dickens's story, A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge leans out of his window on Chistmas morning and asks a loitering boy to purchase a turkey from the window of the local butcher's shop. Imagine trying that in London on Christmas Day 2002. Apart from the detailed advice that you might expect from any loitering 21st-century boy on where to store your turkey, how many butchers' shops are open on 25 December?

In Paris, they all are. It is my Christmas- morning ritual to stroll out, whistling merry tunes from Oliver!, to collect the appellation contrôlée turkey from the corner butcher's. The bird still carries its head, and a label informing you on which farm, and in which village, it grew up in the poultry-rearing area of the Landes, south of Bordeaux. One almost expects to be given its pet name.

In France on Christmas day, all food shops and food markets are open until lunchtime. On Christmas morning, our local food market is always a dazzling spectacle of Dickensian plenty: a colourful splurge of lobsters, crayfish, crabs, sea-urchins, tangerines and poinsettias. When the turkey is safely jammed into the oven, I go there to buy oysters and sprouts, cheese and bread.

There is another big advantage to spending Christmas in Paris. It starts late and finishes early.

The great, holly-bordered British Christmas – robins-with-everything, Page 3 girls in Santa hats, and drunken office parties – starts in mid-October and straggles on into February. In France, Christmas is a quiet, family affair of gluttonous consumption, starting on the evening of 24 December. Everyone is back to work on 26 December.

And yet, and yet. Christmas is always a dangerous time for expats. Homesickness, like the flu, can strike at any moment. This is especially true in Paris this year – the first Christmas without Marks & Spencer. Even the British grocery shop started by Galeries Lafayette, on the site of the M&S flagship store on the boulevard Haussmann, has thoughtlessly closed for renovations.

My wife was attacked the other day by a craving for mince pies. Having tried several shops without luck, she went to the posh Left Bank department store, Le Bon Marché. There was a British Christmas section with mountains of Christmas puddings, but no mince pies. There was an American section with heaps of cranberry sauce, but no mince pies. Close to despair, she stumbled on the German section, which had pumpernickel and – O comfort and joy! – a big pile of Mr Kipling's mince pies. (Maybe they should have been renamed Herr Kipling's?) The paraphernalia of a British Christmas, once available cheaply at M&S, was not prized by expatriates alone. The French have a love-hate affair with the Christmas pudding – pronounced "le pouddeeng" – in particular.

One 25 December, more than 20 years ago, I was working at the French news agency, Agence France-Presse. I brought in a home-made, whisky-soaked Christmas pudding, sent to me by friends in Scotland. I placed it among the French delicacies assembled by my colleagues. It vanished in seconds. Since returning to Paris, I have given M&S puddings as Christmas presents to people who have helped me. Some adore them. Some complain that their discriminating French insides will never recover.

Still, the demise of M&S's missionary work for the British way of Christmas is a pity. Soon after M&S closed, a friend overheard a conversation between two young mothers in a Parisian playground:

Maman 1: "Isn't it terrible about Marks & Spencer? Last Christmas, I bought some bizarre things there. You pull them at either end, they explode, and everyone has a present to put beside their plate."

Maman 2 (amazed): "Only the English could think of something like that."

US and France singing from same hymn sheet

A lot of rubbish has been spoken this year by French people who say they hate and fear America (but have never been to the US) and by Americans who say they despise the French (without having been to France).

Another of our Christmas rituals is to attend the carol service at the American Cathedral, the largest Anglican church in mainland Europe, just off the Champs-Elysées.

We have a good reason for going. Our 12-year-old son is in the choir. Charles is Washington-born and therefore an American citizen, even though he is also Irish and British. He has read the first lesson at the carol services for the past five years. This is probably his last year as a choirboy. He is approaching six feet tall. His voice is collapsing into a teenage growl.

All parental bias apart, the American Cathedral choir gives extraordinary performances each year, on Saturday and Sunday evenings in mid-December, of traditional and some lesser-known English and French carols. The services were especially moving this year, with carols sung in English, French and Latin, and lessons read in English, French and Mandarin Chinese.

Usually the audience is 70 per cent or more American but there seemed to me to be fewer Americans this time and more French. I suppose that the relative absence of Americans can be explained by the economic recession and by the banking recession in particular. The number of postings abroad has been reduced.

Meanwhile, word of the charm of the American Cathedral carol services has clearly been spreading among Parisians. The French have many beautiful carols – carol is a French word – but the service specifically dedicated to carols is an English, and Anglican, tradition.

Given all the attempts to stir Franco-American enmity, it was touching to see so many French people in the American Cathedral, which is itself a symbol of Franco-American friendship. It was consecrated in November 1885, the same day that a gift from France, the Statue of Liberty (left), was dedicated in New York harbour.

Lounge lizards

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me... a rabid marsupial fox and an iguana that ate the Christmas tree.

The fashion for giving exotic pets has reached crisis proportions in France. Iguanas, snakes, parrots, various species of African bats, marsupial foxes and Florida turtles are regularly abandoned by their unwilling owners after a few weeks.

Florida turtles, which can grow to weigh four pounds, are an especially common gift. The Worldwide Fund for Nature estimates there are now 50,000 living wild in France.

Remember, an iguana is not just for Christmas...

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