It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas ......

While Amy Winehouses’ ‘they tried to make me go to rehab’ and Adeles’ ‘someone like you’ aren't immediately thought of as jolly ‘Christmas Music’ they do feature heavily in the selection of festive tracks which are piped gently through the increasingly busy shopping streets here in St Malo. 

It’s eclectic to be sure but …how we love Christmas here ………..

The Christmas lights were turned on last week (yes, just last week and not in October as is so often the case in the UK), the small wooden huts are arriving en mass to create the pretty Christmas village market and the seasonal beverage of choice ‘Vin Chaud’ is now readily available for consumption almost everywhere you look!

Every evening at 6pm throughout December, excited children gather with their parents at a pre-determined window location within the walls to hear the voice of ‘Pere Noel’, to listen to a suitably festive story (usually concerning pirates – it is St Malo after all!) and to collect a small token gift that is provided by the town.  This wonderful little local tradition of ‘les fenetres d’advent’ – ‘the windows of advent’ only serves to heighten the children’s’ excitement at the arrival of Christmas and provide the adults with a suitably festive reason for additional socialising (not that they need one!).

And of course Christmas food …… but what to cook?  France is awash with excellent food as we all know (that’s one of the main reasons we are here) but with no really set traditional dish for Christmas, so it’s ‘carte blanche’ as they say.  We are hosting good friends and family chez nous for ‘le reveillion de Noel’ or ‘Christmas Eve, the very traditional main event for the French and there is much discussion and debate on menu selections …………

…….. any suggestions from anyone???