Christmas in another language

I am doing yet another of my 30-day French challenges in my vain attempt to understand spoken French. This one’s great, though – it’s all about Christmas. Many of our traditions overlap, but it surprised me to learn that they don’t really have much in the way of Christmas films or music. Although the English-speaking world seems to have more than enough for everyone. In fact, Mariah Carey reigns supreme in France with All I Want For Christmas Is You, exactly as she does all across the globe. In the UK, however, we have a perverse love of the song  Fairytale of New York – a foulmouthed festive tale of doomed relationships, drunkenness and gambling. Why we all like it so much I don’t know. Maybe it prepares us for the family fallings-out that are about to come.

The French do have a sprinkling of their own songs and films. There’s a much-loved song dating from 1944 called Petit papa Noël, which sounds horribly cloying and maudlin to me. In the 1977 video, Tino Rossi is singing soulfully, backed by the mandatory choir of children in pristine woolly hats and scarves, but who am I to criticise other people’s sentimental Christmas offerings? We have so many of our own. In the interests of research, I forced myself to watch Cliff Richard’s Mistletoe and Wine video, where no cliché has been rejected. The choir is not only decked out in scarves, hats and ear muffs, they also indulge in some very unfortunate swaying in front of an unlikely and unlovely pile of snow. And for some reason a running tap plays a prominent role. Maybe it has a pushy agent. There’s so much more, but I think I’ve set the scene. Tino Rossi, all is forgiven.

There seem to be only a handful of Christmas films for French people to choose from, unlike our endless stream. Apparently, the most popular one is Le père Noël est une ordure, which loosely translates as “Father Christmas is a Dirtbag”, which doesn’t sound very festive, but would probably go down well with fans of Fairytale of New York. We have a TV channel here in the UK that has been showing a Christmas movie every afternoon since October, but from now until December 25^th they are devoting the entire afternoon to festive films. I hope they go rogue on Christmas Day and show Halloween or Beetlejuice.  I love Christmas, but I do think we need to show some restraint.

Maybe the French just show a bit more restraint than we do when it comes to Christmas. Although, perhaps unsurprisingly, their festive food looks even more indulgent than ours: foie gras, oysters, salmon, turkey, chocolate log and cheese. This feast is rounded off with Thirteen Desserts, a tradition from Provence representing Christ and the twelve apostles. Gluttony and piety all rolled into one. Maybe it’s not the language I’m struggling to understand, it’s the people.