Happy Hanukkah--a festival of light during these longest nights of the year.  It's no accident that both Hanukkah and Christmas occur near the winter solstice as promises of new life and light.  I always find it depressing when it's dark when I get up and dark by late afternoon.  For twenty years, beginning in 1987, I spent almost every holiday in France, and it always cheered me knowing that by the time I returned to Topeka, even though winter had just begun, the days had started to lengthen.  By this date, my tickets were purchased, my two composition classes each semester had written their final papers, which I had graded, and there was nothing left but to give two finals, grade them, and turn in my finals grades.  If the exams were scheduled for the end of the week, I remember standing over the students, grabbing their tests after two hours, and rushing off to grade them.

I'd fly to Paris, take the Métro to the Gare de l'Est and then take my chances on how long I'd have to wait for the next train to Metz, three hours to the east.  (Now there is a TGV, the superfast train, that shortens the journey to a little over an hour.)  When I first signed up to teach a year in Metz, I always thought it was ironic, given their reputation, that my friends in Paris would say, "Now, remember, the people in the east of France aren't warm and open like we are."  Since I have no family here, I'd spend the holidays with my French family: Frédéric, a tailor; Gérard, his partner; Paule, his twin sister; and their mother, Simonne (yes, with two n's).  Later, Jean, Paule's partner and now husband, joined the family.  In the days leading up to Christmas, Frédéric would continue to work.  I'd sleep late and then take the bus downtown to do my shopping.  The streets would be crowded with pedestrians, and as an extra treat, there would be stands selling hot chestnuts.  After twenty years, buying original gifts got harder and harder, but I always found something.  A silver ramasse-miettes (which cleans bread crumbs from off the table) was one big hit.  Paule loved jewelry, so she was easy.  One year I brought her a ring that was my mother's.  I had no one to pass it on to, and its 1930s style fit perfectly with Paule's.  After shopping, I'd take the bus back, stopping at Frédéric's tailor shop, watching him bent over the table and listening to the hiss of steam from the irons.  He left school at age thirteen to apprentice as a tailor and worked in that profession until he retired.  When he began, people still ordered bespoke suits, but by the time I knew him, it seemed easier and cheaper to buy them off the rack, so he mainly did alterations and repairs with maybe only two or three orders for suits a year.  Still, since sewing on a button is an ordeal for me, I always watched in admiration.

On Christmas eve, there was the reveillon, the big evening dinner and gift exchange.  Paule would do the cooking--course after course.  Frédéric was supposed to close the shop early, but he never did, so Paule would panic when he wasn't home until after 7.  We all dressed for the occasion and sometime after 8, Frédéric, Gérard, and I would descend from the fourth floor apartment to the first floor where Paule and Simonne lived.  First, there would be the apéro, my choice always being Suze, a slightly bitter, gentian-flavored drink that was generally out of favor with the younger generation, and amuse-bouches.  About 9, we'd move to the table for three hours of feasting.  The first course was always oysters, which for some reason only Simonne and I liked.  Paule would've shucked three dozen of them, and they were all for Simonne and me, while the others ate shrimp and langoustines.  Even though Simonne was in her 80s, she could keep up with me.  Turkeys weren't popular in France, but there was usually fowl for the main course: often a goose, sometimes squab, capons, or tiny quail.  We would spend at least an hour over le plat principal (not the entrée, which is the first course, the entrance to the meal).  Then there was a salad.  French salads for this course are typically very small, just a few leaves as an interlude.  At the first meal I ever had at a friend's house in France, I took an American-sized helping before realizing that I had left almost nothing for the rest of the guests.  Next comes the cheese course, and Frédéric and I were alike in loving the runniest and stinkiest of cheeses (the very smelly époisse is my all-time favorite).  All of these courses were accompanied by many bottles of wine.  Finally, as midnight neared and "Minuit Chrétiens" ("O Holy Night" in our version) played, we'd switch to champagne for the dessert, always a bûche de Noel, or Yule log.  This first one of the season was always good, but then for the next week or so, everyone you'd visit would offer you yet more of the same dessert.  Much the same thing happens after Epiphany, when everyone serves a galette du roi, which is delicious the first time, but then when you've had it everywhere for the next week begins to get a little monotonous. 

Sometime after midnight, champagne glasses still in hand, we'd move to the living room for the opening of gifts.  Four or five hours of eating and drinking--that was perfectly normal and perfectly wonderful.  The next day, everyone visits everyone else, and the eating and drinking continues.  After a week of this, it's time for the reveillon for New Year's, and the whole cycle would begin again.  Who was that again who said that the people in eastern France weren't friendly?  For twenty years, they were my family, and I loved every minute and every mouthful of the two or three weeks I'd spend there.  Now Simonne and Gérard have died, and I won't be there.  The feasting will go on, though with a somewhat diminished family.

Another two weeks and the solstice will arrive.  The days will begin to grow longer.  What we need is a clean, well-lighted place--and oysters, goose, and stinky cheese don't hurt either.