Christmas comes to the Chateau
Monsieur Xavier makes his bûche de Noël, Raynald explains Advent, and Christmas peace descends on the Chateau
Christmas comes to Courtomer. The église des Saints Etienne et Lhomer is across the fields from the Chateau.
Chère amie, cher ami,
“C’est une contrainte!” cried Monsieur Xavier, sunk deep in his reclining armchair, plaid slippers on his outstretched feet. He might have been reading the paper, or he might have dozed off, lulled by the warmth of the woodstove in their house in the old stable block.
“Oh! Hüe!” exclaimed Madame Francine, from her post at the fourneau. With their children and grandchild descending on the maison du gardien in barely a day, she has been bustling from the storeroom and the freezer to the stove. It is strenuous work. But Francine is not one to shirk from her duties as maîtresse de maison.
She straightened up, raised her chin, and smoothed down her apron.
“Deux bûches…et pas du commerce!”
“Two bûches…and not store-bought!”
Monsieur Xavier sighed. He made a pretense of returning to his reading, but he was already gathering himself together.
Like many long and happily married couples, our gardien and his wife tolerate each other’s idiosyncrasies and petites faiblesses, little weaknesses. But the matter had already been discussed and firmly decided by Francine.
Monsieur Xavier has always made at least two bûches de Noël for his family at Christmas. As a young boy, he trained as a pâtissier. He knows how to bake and then roll up the tender biscuit so it won’t crack or crumble. He himself mixes up the delectable, buttery crème to generously fill the rouleau. His glaçage au chocolat gleams, not a wrinkle or a smudge on its impeccable surface. And he places the little woodsmen and mushrooms, the little trees and holly leaves on the finished bûche with deft precision.
"Les préparatifs de Noël" as depicted in a kitchen much like that at our Maison de la Ferme, from the front page of Rustica magazine, December 23, 1934.
“Un Noël sans bûche!” said Francine, turning away and shaking her head with indignation. “Triste comme un jour sans pain.”
Yes, Christmas without the traditional bûche de Noël would be as sorry as a day without bread, to use the time-honored French expression.
To alleviate la contrainte, Monsieur Xavier had proposed that Francine buy a couple of büches at Les Trois Mousquetaires in nearby Seés.
But the fête de Noël is a time for pardon. And for peace. And that means accepting certain constraints.
“And after all, peace –not the büche -- is the raison d’être for la fête de Noël,” commented our friend Raynald, hearing about this exchange. He had stopped by the Chateau to taste some of our Nova Scotia black fruitcake, a well-known product of my own fourneau in this festive season.
We nodded our heads somewhat dubitatively. Raynald, professor of Histoire at the Sorbonne, is not given to platitudes.
“Elaborate, I pray you,” entreated our son Henry, politely.
“Of course, Christmas was never celebrated at all in the early church,” began Raynald. “The date of the birth of Christ was made to coincide with the Invictus Sol, the festival of the birth of the Roman sun divinity, Sol. The Emperor Aurelien had instituted this feast on December 25, a date which falls after the winter solstice – when the sun, you might say, is reborn as the days grow longer.”
“Cultural appropriation,” nodded our dear friend Ragehault, rather grimly. She had also stopped in to partake of our foreign gâteau de fruits.
“Exactly,” agreed Raynald, with a pleased smile at his listener’s acuity.
Aurelien, he explained, appropriated for Sol the date dedicated to the sun god Mithra. The Emperor wanted to fuse the Roman cult of the “Unconquered Sun” with that of the Persian divinity. Mithra had become very popular in the Empire of the 2nd century. And Aurelien was welding together an Empire on the verge of civil war and collapse.
The Roman sun god Sol, with his radiant crown.
About a hundred years later, as Christianity was on the verge of becoming the official religion of Rome, Pope Liberius chose December 25 as the date of Christ’s birth. The feast of the Invictus Sol became the feast of the Sun of Righteousness.
Ragehault gave an alert cough. This title for Jesus, she reminded us, comes from the prophecy of Malachi in the Old Testament.
Christmas, the date of the birth of Christ on December 25, became a day of holy obligation in France in 506 A.D. Christians were duty bound to attend the Mass of Christ on the Dies Natalis, or Noël. And four weeks before Christmas, Christians were supposed to fast and observe good behavior. This was the Avent, the period of preparation.
“But for several centuries, there was no agreement about the correct dates for Advent. When must this good behavior begin?”
The lack of accord caused frissons, precariously close to blows, among monks and priests as to the correct dates the Advent liturgy should be celebrated. When, in 933, Christmas fell on a Monday, the monks at Fleury were enraged to discover that their confrères in Orléans had celebrated Advent a week early. This was discovered during a joint celebration for the entombment of Saint Benoît – the patron saint of the monastery of Fleury – on December 6. The monks of Orleans had not counted Christmas Eve as a Sunday…even though it fell on a Sunday!
Henry and I looked at each other in confused surmise. Ranehault seemed intrigued.
“Where are you going with this, Raynald?” asked my husband in a stern tone. While he enjoys occasional visits from our neighbor, in his view such flights of erudition veer dangerously close to arcane pedantry.
“The bishop had to be called in,” explained Raynald. “A concile was held in Orléans which decreed that Advent starts on the fourth Sunday before Christmas. But the question wasn’t really settled for another century. It was the Peace of God which put an end to these disputes.
“By the way, in Normandy,” he added as an aside, “it was merely called the truce of God, “La Trève de Dieu.” C’était la réponse normand!”
He chuckled, as did Ranehault. We decided to find out later what he meant by a “Norman answer.”
The Middle Ages in France, as in other parts of Christendom, were a chaotic time. Just as church leaders were unable to enforce uniform observance of feast days, so civil order was frequently disrupted by private wars, raids, feuds, rape and robbery. The Paix de Dieu, the Peace of God, was a movement that began in the South of France in the 10th century. In the presence of holy relics, the local bishop and the clergy, the seigneurs swore to uphold public order. At first, the assemblies called for an end to violence done to the unarmed – monks and nuns, priests, serfs and peasants. As the movement gathered momentum, the declarations required an end to violence on holy days. These expanded to include part of every week, from Wednesday night to Monday morning. And finally, it demanded an end to all unChristian behavior during holy periods of the year – like Advent.
Perhaps this illustration of "The Institution of the Paix de Dieu," from a 10th-century bible in the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Pierre-de-Roda, suggests the benefits of a selective use of violence.
“And thus,” concluded Raynald, “it was essential to determine when Advent started and when it ended.”
The penalties for transgression, he informed us, ranged from trial by fire – clutching a piece of red-hot metal, to exile, confiscation of property, and fines. One needed to know when one might take up cudgels or a sword with relative impunity.
“Are you sure about that?” asked my skeptical husband testily. “Surely the Peace of God activists got going before the Advent period was settled.”
“Perhaps you are right,” conceded Raynald amiably. “Perhaps it was to avoid embarrassment.”
“You see,” he went on, “In the year that Advent was officially defined, Christmas again fell on a Monday. It was 1038.”
The emperor Conrad II and his son had arrived in Strasbourg. They were dressed to celebrate the first Sunday in Advent. The Emperor was to represent Christ the King entering Jerusalem in glory. He expected to make a triumphal procession to the Cathedral, where he would be asperged with holy water, descend from his horse to kiss the gospels, and be greeted by the clergy swinging incense burners. But just as in Orleans in 933, the first Sunday in Advent had been celebrated the week before.
The following Sunday, the assembled bishops and the Emperor definitively established that Advent, the waiting period leading up to the feast of Christ’s nativity, begins four Sundays before Christmas Day.
“But remind me to tell you about William the Conqueror’s Trève de Dieu in Normandy in 1047,” concluded Raynald.
My husband hastily rose to his feet.
“One remembers le Conquérant was crowned king of England on Christmas 1066,” Ranehault put in, as she too rose to her feet. There was a tilt of her head and a twinkle in her eye for Raynald.
It was time to put away the fruitcake and down the glass of whiskey. We bid adieu to our friends. They went out into the darkness of the late afternoon, murmuring companionably.
“I wonder what they are talking about now?” wondered my husband.
“But speaking of Advent,” he continued. “I know what I’m waiting for. Some of Monsieur Xavier’s bûche de Noël. And a bit of peace.”
Over at the maison du gardien, our gardien is surely delighted to know that his Christmas confection is so eagerly awaited. And peace assuredly reigns, as he stirs his chocolate glaçageover the stove, and Francine contentedly readies the house for their visitors.
Joyeuses fêtes!
Elisabeth
Getting ready for la fête de Noël in the bibliothèque of the Chateau.
As always, Heather and Beatrice (info@chateaudecourtomer.com and +33 (0) 6 49 12 87 98) will be happy to help you reserve your own holiday or special gathering at the Chateau or just to rent the Chateau, the Farmhouse or both. We have just a few openings for 2023, and are taking bookings for 2024, 2025 and 2026. We look forward to hearing from you. A bientôt!