by Janine Marsh
When the Bread Man arrived that month with his normal vanload of bread and croissants, he also brought traditional Christmas treats. Craquelin boulonnais, which originated from the city of Boulogne-sur-Mer, is a pastry shaped in a figure of eight that’s a cross between a sugary pretzel and a croissant, but with even more butter, which hardly seems possible. If that’s not bad enough, people here like to dip them into a bowl of treacle-thick hot chocolate. And a local Christmas cake called a coquille. It has been made in the far north of France since at least the sixteenth century. It’s not for the faint-hearted – a large, sweet brioche bun filled with butter, sugar and raisins, and yes, just looking at one makes you put on weight. Spicy gingerbread fills the van with sweet smells, and there are crispy cookies iced with the smiling face of Saint Nicholas. Galette des rois cakes, which are traditionally eaten for the Epiphany on 6 January when the Three Kings turned up to give gifts to the baby Jesus, creep onto shopping lists a few weeks before the day. Within this sweet, flaky and buttery frangipane tart, bakers hide a charm called a féve, which can be anything from a mini religious figure to a Disney figure to a celebrity. Whoever gets the charm in their slice of cake tries not to break a tooth or swallow it, and is then ‘crowned’ king or queen with a paper crown that comes with the cake. Apparently the president doesn’t need to worry about that, as he’s not allowed to have a charm in his galette.
The Bread Man’s English had improved considerably during the last few months, aided by watching American TV programmes with his daughter. Handing over my baguette and a craquelin (you can only get them at this time of the year, that’s my excuse), he tells me that his daughter Nadia has asked him to ask me, ‘What is sucks?’
‘Pardon?’ I ask warily, wondering what on earth she has been watching.
‘Nadia says that Americans say it a lot. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Mentalist and Abby on NCIS, they say “that sucks” all the time.’
Phew. This, I could explain. ‘When you’re not happy with something, you say it sucks,’ I said. ‘Like if you leave the bread in the oven too long and the baguette is burned, you could say that sucks.’ I looked down at my dark brown and very crispy baguette.
‘Like we would say ça ne casse pas trois pattes à un canard?’ Literally this is ‘it doesn’t break three of a duck’s legs’, but means ‘it’s nothing to write home about’. It is one of those phrases that makes me think that, however much my French improves, there’s a long way still to go. That and asking where the rubber gloves (gants en caoutchouc) are in the supermarket. When I say the almost impossible to pronounce ‘caoutchouc’, it sounds more like ‘cow shit’ and makes Mark laugh every time.
‘Not quite, it’s more like ça craint or, if it sucks a lot, c’est nul,’ I said, just as the post lady arrived clutching a bundle of calendars, which are sold for Christmas tips.
‘Ah merci,’ said the Bread Man. ‘’Appy Christmas.’ He chuckled to himself and mumbled ‘Ze brrrread sucks’ as he got into his van to drive off to Madame Bernadette, who was waiting impatiently at the gate of her little cottage down the bottom of the hill, ready to scrutinize the baskets of Christmassy cakes.
Shopping for Christmas food in France requires time, planning and savoir faire – knowing where to get the best of everything is important. Supermarkets are full of the sound of largely English-language Christmas songs and shelves are heaving with all manner of treats – wine, champagne and liqueurs. There’s even Christmas beer, a strong and fruity brew. Boxes of oysters are sold at a rate of knots at markets, bringing with them an odour of the seaside. Cakeshops in the towns will vie for custom, their windows crammed with enticing pastries, and perfectly illustrating why the French call window shopping lèche-vitrine – window licking! Cheese shops will do a roaring trade, and baguettes and breads of all sorts will be zipping out of the boulangerie doors as bakers bake furiously to try to keep up with demand.
Christmas markets are one of the most popular places for finding seriously mouth-watering treats with stallholders popping up from all around France selling local products such as cognac from Cognac, Chablis from Chablis and champagne from Champagne. Not to mention cheeses from all over the country, foie gras, crystallized fruit, tasty tapenade and other goodies from Provence, cheesy tarts from the Haute-Savoie region and great steaming tubs of Alsatian choucroute (sauerkraut). Every town holds a Christmas market. It might be for an afternoon or daily for five weeks. Shopping while you wander streets and squares sparkling with lights, the aroma of hot chestnuts and mulled wine hanging in the cold air, is one of winter’s great pleasures in northern France.
We headed to the annual Christmas market at Boulogne-sur-Mer where the shops were decked with lights and the ancient UNESCO listed belfry was lit up. Little wooden chalets were festooned with festive wreaths, manned by smiling artisans, unbothered by the rain as the cobbled streets around them glistened with water. A four-man band roamed the street playing happy tunes alongside jugglers and elves. Knights cantered around on wooden hobby horses, entertaining the crowd and, discovering I was Anglaise, made me repeat phrases that I didn’t remotely understand. I was probably saying things such as ‘I am a boiled egg’ or ‘I like to eat worms.’ Whatever it was, it certainly got a good laugh from the by now large audience watching me blush at being the centre of attention.
On Christmas Eve, the emphasis is firmly on feasting and family, and tables are laden with all those gourmet delicacies that took such effort to seek out. The long, long réveillon dinner lasts until the early hours of Christmas morning. All over the village dishes will be made with love and passion as keen cooks prepare for the evening’s festivities. Around midnight, a DJ will arrive at the town-hall party room and the more youthful residents will leave the family table to join their friends for a shindig, while the elders with any stamina left remain at the table. Owls will hoot in indignation, appalled by the sound of the throbbing music from the bottom of the hill.
Christmas Day is quieter in these parts and some boulangeries even open in the morning so that people can get their can’t-live-without-it fresh bread. For us, it’s a day for exploring empty beaches with the dogs, wrapped against the cold, running up and down mountainous sand dunes and thanking our lucky stars for all that we have.
Next day, everything goes back to normal, no Boxing Day holiday here in France. Shops open as usual and even the dustmen come to empty the bins. But it’s not like any other week since New Year’s Eve is on the doorstep and that means preparation for the next banquet begins …
On New Year’s Eve we went to wish Claudette bonne fin d’année (you don’t say bonne année, happy new year, here until the first day of January) before we had to get ready for the evening’s festivities. It was a freezing afternoon and everyone had their shutters firmly closed, making the village look like a ghost town except for the wisps of smoke coming from chimneypots. The pale winter sun was just disappearing behind the hill where Monsieur’s white horses stood out against the still verdant grass. Rosy hues lit up the sky, mist hovered over the fields, and great balls of mistletoe like giant nests made by the world’s biggest birds stood out in the leafless trees. There was so much mistletoe that even the Christmas culling had made no discernible difference. Thierry’s sheepdog came hurtling down the hill to see where we were going and followed us into Claudette’s courtyard.
‘Entrez,’ called Claudette when we knocked, and hot air blasted out as we pushed open the door. Hurrying in, we were ushered straight to the kitchen table, as is the way when you visit people here. A glass of wine was poured before we could get our coats off, the oven was stoked up and the dog, which had followed us in, was told to stay by the fire. He was clearly used to sneaking in to keep company with the old lady.
‘Would you like something to eat?’ asked Claudette. ‘No thanks,’ I said, which was pointless because Claudette takes no notice and always puts food on the table when someone arrives. Out came a little dish of homemade spiced walnuts, slices of saucisson, little
rounds of baguette, a pat of salty butter on a wooden board and some tiny madeleine cakes.
‘Now,’ she said as she sat down, ‘how is your next book coming along, Janine? Mark, what will you be working on next? We are betting it won’t be long before you are building something new! Drink your wine … try those nuts ...’
She gabbled away in fast French, her rural accent as strong as ever, and before we knew it, an hour had gone by as we chatted about this and that. People here are not rich, but in terms of kindness, of caring and of neighbourliness, Mark and I really feel like we hit the jackpot when, by fate and pure luck, we discovered a neglected farmhouse in a tiny village no one has ever heard of.
