A New Year begins at the Chateau...with memories and a song...

Jour de l'An
| Friday, January 1, 2021

Dear Friend, 

We opened our bedroom window at dawn this morning, sending out the Old Year’s air and welcoming the sharp and wintry freshness of January 1, 2021 within. Rosy light suffused the landscape of trees and lawn. Warming to the eye, if not to the fingers, it glanced upon the stone of the window sill and the chill glass of the panes. 
 
Above the trees, bands of blue and golden pink glowed into brilliance with the climbing sun, then faded into faint tendrils of grey. I pulled the window shut. It was ten of nine, daybreak at the Chateau, where here in Normandy the days are still but a flicker of light in a long winter’s nap.
 
Last night, New Year’s Eve, la fête du Saint Sylvestre, was unusually quiet, which partly explains our early rising. No fireworks intruded this year on the rural calm. But the cheerful tintinnabulation of knives and forks over foie gras and caviar and the clinking of champagne flutes could not be entirely squelched. En petit comité, en famille and à la maison, we celebrated the advent of 2021.
 
Perhaps la Saint Sylvestre 2020 was a more personal fête than is usual. The element of hospitality, of our relations with the world outside our own walls, was absent. Into that unoccupied space came memories, almost forgotten, of other New Year’s Eves spent long ago in other places, with other companions. At least, for me.
 
My childhood was divided by a long sojourn in what was then called the Far East. Here, the New Year was celebrated with dancing dragons, paper lanterns hanging in trees, brightly-lit night markets selling special cakes, and deafening strings of red-paperbound fireworks. We detonated these with glee for days, delighting in the noise and the mounting drifts of shredded red paper left behind. We exchanged square sheets of red paper with gold calligraphy. The characters wished the bearer long life, good luck, and prosperity.
 
But this familiar and beloved world was still alien, we children knew. Our roots were far away, in the dimly remembered maison de famille lived in by our grandmother and her sister. I, the eldest, remembered snow and the red and yellow leaves of fall. The smell of diesel fuel around the barns and our father letting us help drive the tractor. The excitement of the apple harvest, when the migrant pickers arrived in their big cars, when our great-aunt’s housekeeper came up from the city to make us apple pie – as we perceived it -- and when the house brimmed with cousins.
 
We returned there, finally, young strangers eager to rediscover home and to be folded back into a family world. My grandmother asked how I had liked London, which we had visited on our way home. 
 
“London, ai hyah!” I exclaimed, like any wonderstruck Cantonese child. She touched my cheek with a tender finger, and gave a gentle laugh.
 
On that first New Year’s Eve back home, it snowed all day. Grandmother taught us to make a fire in the library with newspaper fans and apple wood. Great preparations went on in the kitchen, with fragrant steam rising from the stove, bottles of champagne set outside the back steps, and polishing of silver. We older children assiduously lent a hand. 
 
“Many hands make light work!” said our grandmother’s iron-eyed cook Betty, passing us spoons and forks.
 
The eight of us cousins had supper as usual in the kitchen, presided over by the long-suffering Betty. Then we were sent upstairs, where we were strangely left to our own devices. We were to wait for the stroke of midnight. At last, half-dreaming or reeling with overexcitement, the eight of us came tumbling down the stairs, hurrying past a full suit of Philippine armor. Our great-uncle’s trophy, of war or travel, menaced us with hollow eyes and mouth from a shadowy corner of the hall. 
 
In the darkened dining room were the remains of a festive meal, white napkins crumpled in punctual heaps, candles burning low in candelabra, a glow of silver serving plates and green glass bottles. In the adjacent drawing room, where we found the grown-ups, the familiar French windows had become tall blocks of night.  The fireplace spread an unsteady light, sending shadows flickering in the currents of air. 
 
Our grandmother turned off the electric lights. We listened in the darkness for the clock. At the last of its twelve metallic booming tones, the lights blazed back on. We hung on to one another’s hands and danced around the big, draughty room, blinking and singing, as loudly as possible, the first three lines of “Auld Lang Syne.” It was all of the song we little foreigners had ever learned, and we had no idea what the words meant.
 
“Happy New Year,” said my grandmother. “Welcome home. And long life, good luck, and prosperity,” she added, tilting her head and smiling down at me.

Oysters from Normandy are carefully raised, rinsed and fed in barrels to fatten them up for the traditional repast of la Saint Sylvestre.

Last night, my husband and I ate our oysters and a tender cut of chevreuil, venison, under candlelight, while a fire threw out welcome beams of light from the hearth. In solitary splendor, we raised a glass to our own children and to dear family and friends in their various corners of the world. And to memories of days of auld.
 

“Faut-il nous quitter sans espoir,
Sans espoir de retour ?
Faut-il nous quitter sans espoir
De nous revoir un jour ? »
 
“Must we depart without hope,
Without hope of return?
Must we take leave without hope
Of seeing one other again?”
 
“Ce n’est qu’un au revoir, mes frères ! » responds the French version of Auld Lang Syne, translated in 1920. 
 
“It is only farewell, my brothers!” – and not a good-bye. 

Upon that cheering line, Happy New Year!
Avec tous mes vœux pour une belle, sainte, et bonne année 2021 !

P.S. Next week, New Year's resolutions at the Chateau...where Mesdames Heather, Aurélie and Francine, Monsieur Xavier and I are preparing your welcome in 2021!

The "aguignette," puff pastry filled with almond paste or apple purée, is traditionally eaten at New Year's in Normandy. In old Norman, the name of these little pastries derives from "as the wheat grows," and is linked to ancient Druidic rituals of the winter solstice. The little fishes, chicks and ducklings signify the "long life, good luck, and prosperity" wished for in every part of the world at the New Year.