So This Is Christmas...

When I was young, I hated the John Lennon song "Happy Christmas (War Is Over)" and my siblings and I would openly mock the "So this is Christmas..." part.  Of course, times have changed, and I now realize that my mom's famous Christmas tape actually has a lot of cool songs on it, and "Happy Christmas" is one of my favorite Christmas songs (the only mockable thing is Yoko screeching the chorus).  But I digress.

So, this is Christmas.  As I did last year, I spent Christmas Eve with a colleague.  I was invited by Hélène (the main person in charge of me) to spend the holiday with her family in Epinal.  Fun fact, Epinal is the sister city of LaCrosse, WI...which I didn't actually remember until this morning.  So on the afternoon of December 24th, I, along with Hélène, her husband Arnaud, her son Swann and her step-sons Louison and Malo ventured into the Vosges for a Christmas feast.  We celebrated with her parents, Yves (an English teacher) and Monique (a marketing teacher); her sister, Caroline (an 8th-year med student) and her boyfriend, Thibault (a film editor); and her brother, Simon (a 2nd-year med student) and his girlfriend Flore (also 2nd-year med student).

Dinner was equally amazing.  We started out with apéros... champagne, raw veggies, bite-size puff pastries, bread stick and NACHOS AND GUAC!!!!  Like real, homemade guac (yeah, its been a while).  Simon, Flore and I decided to steal the guac bowl and keep it near us for the rest of the night.  Eventually, we made it to the table and started with the first course of foie gras, salad and pain d'épices.  After that was a course of fresh oysters (yes mom, I ate raw oysters).  They were amazing...it smelled like a lake, but tasted like heaven.  Next, on to the main course of turkey, bacon-wrapped green beans (Yves explained to me that Wisconsin has "cheeseheads" and the Vosges has "têtes de lard" or "baconheads"...I can live with that), Yorkshire pudding, and warm apples.  After that was the cheese course, and finally dessert of homemade tarte de citron (lemon pie) and bûche de Noël (Yule log).  I taught Flore and Simon the expression "food baby" from Juno.  It was entirely appropriate.

After a round of coffee, we split into teams of two and played Trivial Pursuit in French.  I'm extremely competitive in English, but knew that I couldn't handle it in French on my own (especially since I was getting tired and my French was hitting the wall).  Everyone allowed me to read the questions if I couldn't quite understand, which was nice.  Plus, I even answered some right, so yay me.  Eventually, everyone went to bed, except for Simon, Hélène and I, so we continued to read cards and answer.  Luckily, they skipped the "too French" ones that I would never know.  Trivial Pursuit is my favorite game, so it was a great ego-boost to do well in the French version (I did school everyone on all the America-centric questions).

Hélène's family is so incredibly nice and welcoming.  They kept joking with me, asking me if I wanted more food even after I told them they would have to roll me home and complemented my French (even though I thought that I had a lousy French day).  Père Noël even found me in France and gave me tickets with Hélène to see the play En attendant Godot (Waiting For Godot) in February.  Needless to say, I had a fabulous French Christmas.

Of course, I can't talk about all that food and not show you!  Enjoy!

First course: foie gras, salad, pain d'épices

Second course: fresh oysters


Main course: turkey, bacon-wrapped green beans, Yorkshire pudding and warm apples

Dessert: bûches de Noël