a first Christmas at the Chateau...charmed...and confused by Christmas customs in the Normandy countryside...
Christmas Day
The Chateau’s park on a cold crisp winters morning, captured by Philip Stephenson
| Friday, December 25, 2020
Dear Friend,
Remembering our first Christmas here, I wanted to share part of it with you. I hope this missive will bring you as much pleasure as it does me on this wintry Christmas Day.
May you and yours enjoy a “Joyeux Noël” today!
Gentle snowflakes fell that Christmas Eve, silently covering the roof of the chateau and piling into precarious drifts on the branches of the trees in the park. Across the fields, the windows of the church of Saint Etienne et Saint Lhomer were illuminated. The steeple bells rang the “plenum,” the “full” peals rolling out to the night sky, calling us and the rest of village of Courtomer to mass for the “veillée de Noël.”
Henry and little Edward were already half asleep, worn out by the last few days and the unfamiliarity of Christmas in a foreign land. With the older children, they had followed their father into the wood to find a Christmas tree. The chainsaw did its work on a young fir tree that, like a gangly adolescent, wasn’t exactly straight and was much too thin for its height. Led by their older sisters and brother, the little ones helped haul it out, as picturesque a scene on a snowy day before Christmas as you could imagine.
Later, we went into the next town to look for ornaments. But in the French countryside, Christmas traditions were unexpectedly different. The windows of the chocolatiers displayed chocolate “sabots,” pointy-toed clogs, filled with chocolate “fritures”: stars and holly leaves, fir trees and little shoes. Instead of red and green, blue and silver color schemes predominated. You couldn’t say that Santa Claus was commercialized; he was not to be seen. And Christmas ornaments could not be found.
Finally, in a discount store called “Splash,” which sold cheap mattresses and housewares plus novelty mugs and t-shirts that would make a sailor blush, we found a string of lights to put on the tree. The lights blinked on and off while playing “O Douce Nuit” – Silent Night -- at a feverish pace. The effect was like watching a robot dancing the twist, at once mesmerizing and agonizing. With enormous relief, we found a switch that turned off the lights and sound.
We made Christmas cookies shaped like stars, rabbits, and crescent moons and hung them on the tree with red thread. We made paper chains from shiny wrapping paper. Henry made a star out of gold foil wrapped around cardboard. I bought five little sabots filled with colorful bonbons and friandises – sucre d’orge, pâte de fruits, pralines. And we also hung stockings from the mantel. For as I assured Edward, Santa Claus was surely planning to steer his sleigh to our roof, even if he skipped everyone else in France.
If traditions were different in our pocket of the French countryside, the spirit of Christmas was just as merry. The school put on a performance in the local auditorium. Parents and grandparents, brothers and sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins, godparents and well-wishers trooped in, shaking off damp coats and hats, talking, exclaiming, and greeting one another with benevolent animation before the lights dimmed. Edward’s class – the maternel – did a folk dance. It was an ambitious undertaking for three-year-olds.
Each little boy, dressed in black trousers and a red sash, was paired with a little girl. Like the rest of the audience, we gazed fondly upon the adorable spectacle…until we realized that our own little gars had abandoned his partner and was locked into a fierce pushing contest with his best friend, our neighbors’ son Gabriel. The boys swayed back and forth stiffly, arms braced around each other’s neck, veering perilously close to the edge of the stage. They were saved by a deus ex machina -- la maitresse, their teacher -- who swooped out from behind the curtain and firmly sent them back to their partners.
And the children learned French carols. Many were the same songs we sang in English – “Douce Nuit” was “Silent Night,” as our family knew only too well, “Mon Beau Sapin” was “O Christmas Tree,” “Minuit Chrétien” was “O Holy Night.” But there were a few surprises. At first, I thought I had misunderstood the lyrics to the “Complainte de Saint Nicolas.”
“Mais oui, Maman!” said Henry, our studious child, nodding his head decisively. Arriving in France at the tender age of five, he had been completely absorbed into our new world. He picked up the jaunty little tune from the top:
“Il était trois petits enfants
qui s’en allaient glaner aux champs.
S'en vont au soir chez un boucher.
“Boucher, voudrais-tu nous loger ?”
“Entrez, entrez, petits enfants,
Il y a de la place assurément.”
Ils n'étaient pas sitôt entrés,
Que le boucher les a tués,
Les a coupés en petits morceaux,
Mis au saloir comme pourceaux.”
The three little children were gleaning in the fields when the winter day grew cold and dark, sang Henry in his sweet piping voice. They asked a butcher for shelter.
“Oh yes, indeed, enter, enter!” said the butcher. “I’ve got just the place!”
He chopped the three little children into pieces and put them into a saloir, a jar for making salt pork.
Ciel! What happened to “Rudolph au Nez Rouge” or “The Wexford Carol”?
Saint Nicolas resurrects the three little children (right), after they were pickled by the wicked butcher whose help they had asked (left).
“La Complainte de Saint Nicolas” is a French folksong, a “complainte,” written down by the poet Gerard de Nerval in 1842. Nerval was a contemporary of the Brothers Grimm, who memorably captured a world inhabited by abandoned children, murderous grandmothers, and child-eating witches. Folk tales, wrote the Grimms, are like proverbs; they represent deep truths and deeply human preoccupations. As with the tales of the Brothers Grimm, the Complainte was an instant hit with its mid-19th century audience. At a time when mass communication, mass transportation and industrialization were rapidly transforming everyday life, these folk narratives gave words and substance to ancient traditions, preserving them like the children in the butcher’s salty saloir.
Seven years later, sang Henry, Saint Nicolas came knocking on the butcher’s door.
“Enter, enter!” cries the butcher. He offers the saint a piece of ham or a morsel of juicy veal. But Saint Nicolas points instead to the saloir:
Du p'tit salé je veux avoir,
Qu'il y a sept ans qu'est dans l'saloir.
Quand le boucher entendit cela,
Hors de sa porte il s'enfuya.
The butcher, seeing the game is up, tries to flee. But good Saint Nicolas restrains him.
“God pardons all,” he solemnly assures the assassin. He poses three fingers on the lid of the jar. Yawning as after a long sleep, the three children miraculously step forth, resurrected:
Le premier dit: « J'ai bien dormi ! »
Le second dit: « Et moi aussi ! »
Et le troisième répondit :
« Je croyais être en paradis ! »
A happy ending! Henry smiled contentedly and went off, humming, to look for pine cones.
On this Christmas Eve of 2020, we drape our tree with the old string of “Silent Night” lights, and put Henry’s star on the spindly topmost branch. Outside is the velvety black night, lit with stars, muffled with invisible clouds. The bells peal the “plenum” from Courtomer’s little church, calling the faithful to prayer and reflection, a reminder of the promise of forgiveness, of new beginnings, and of the soul’s eternal life.
We take up a prayer book, and read aloud:
« Gaudete in Domino semper : iterum dico, gaudete »
Rejoice! begins the mass for the Christmas season.
And rejoice is what we intend to do! Wishing you and yours a happy day and new memories in 2021 at Chateau de Courtomer!
Joyeux Noël!
