Le Sapin

Xavier always picks the fattest ones. Ambitious, even in his tree selection. Nutcracker effect - the tree dwarfs the rest of the room. Romy, Colette and Marguerite were wide-eyed and leaping around (breaking ornaments, naturally). The lights were tangled and each girl wanted to be the star placer, but the general effect was a dash of Christmas magic. Our Danish au pair was trimmed and made shiny (the girls love her, we all do). And now we gather around the tree to read stories and sit in the twinkling lights.

I love this moment when lived through three little girls. Colette has had a lot of Christmas questions this year. Esteban’s (her amoureux) mother informed him that there is no Père Noël and he sadly unloaded this knowledge onto Colette. Kind of confusing because throughout the month of December at school, the girls learn 20 Christmas carols for the Christmas performance and all bad behavior is reprimanded with the threat of Père Noël withholding gifts. Colette is perplexed. Romy just wants chocolate and presents. Marguerite wants to jump high and do flips on a trampoline. Fingers crossed for them all.

Noël in Provence: 13 desserts

My favorite Christmas tradition here is the Provence 13 desserts de Noël. Anyone from around here knows which desserts make this list. They assemble the desserts together for the Christmas feast. We dedicated a table to them. I had been gathering them and planning for a few weeks in advance.

The 13 desserts are made up of an assortment of:

* Dried fruit and nuts: raisins, hazelnuts, dried figs, almonds, dates
* Fresh fruit: clementines, apples, melon
* Biscuits from Aix
* Pompe à l'huile (a sweet cake or brioche made with orange flower water and olive oil)
* Gibassier (a galette made with fruited olive oil, spiced with anise)
* Candied fruit (here melon and red peppers!)
* Calissons d'Aix (a marzipan-like candy made from almond paste and candied melon);
* Bûche de Noël (tradition chocolate yule log cake)
* Black nougat
* White nougat



There are whole markets dedicated to these desserts. People often order the cakes, biscuits and bûche from their local boulangeries. In the next town over, we found a divine boulangerie (if you are in the region: La Biscuiterie de Rognes: 6 Avenue d'Aix, 13840 Rognes). Full of beautiful things to eat (all year-round), more like lovely crafts than food. I ordered a few of the desserts from here and went to pick them up on Christmas Eve morning.



I love the tiles that lead into the bakery.



Another Christmas tradition in Provence: le Blé de la Sainte-Barbe. Xavier's cousin's wife, Karine, who lives in a nearby town and who has become a close friend, told me about many of these traditions and came over one day with two little bags of wheat seeds. To be planted on December 4 - the day of Sainte Barbe - the day that opens the advent season for the French. The seeds are to be planted and grown in cotton and placed on the table the day of Christmas festivities. They are symbolic of prosperity and if your grass has grown tall and green, your year will be a bountiful one.



The girls planted our seeds. This is the grass a few days after planting (fully grown in the windows below).



Getting the table ready (love our tablecloth gift from John). It was a good Christmas feast - we fed 13 people!

Noël in Provence: Christmas Morning

Christmas morning here begins with breakfast: croissants, pain au chocolat, tartines, chocolat-chaud (torture for the little ones). Marguerite, Jules, Colette and Romy had one bite of their pastries and were jumping up from their seats to get going. They lined up outside of the living room youngest to oldest and waited until the moment they could enter the room. The shutters still closed - a small candle on each pile of presents, souliers full of chocolate papillotes, Tino Rossi's version of Petit Papa Noël playing softly. Marie said she had goosebumps when she walked in the room - it took her back to Christmas after Christmas of these same small rituals.