Christmas Is Coming

Christmas Is Coming

And so is winter. I've discovered that the threshold for when I really wake up to this is the remembrance ceremony in the village on the 11th of November. It's quite a low'-key and moving ceremony and always has it's Clochemerle element with the sound system. It is guaranteed that either at least once microphones will be off when they should be on for the speeches or that the recording of the national anthem played will be out of step with the children from the school who are singing it. It happens every year and I find it rather endearing. Every formal ceremony should have its Clochemerle moment.

I know that the advent of Christmas is heralded in the shops long before then but that is too early for the perception to really hit home with me. After the remembrance ceremony, however, three things happen in quick succession: I get asked to create the Christmas quiz for the Beaumont library again and I get asked to come to the first rehearsal of the Christmas carols and those two things remind me to check the number of Christmas cards I have left over from last year and to think about presents for family in England. Also, Beaujolais nouveau arrives in the village.

In fact the first rehearsal for the Christmas carols was on the 15^th of November, which is when the Beaujolais nouveau arrived at the Bar du Pont. So immediately after the rehearsal Steve, Jo and I went along to the Bar du Pont for a tasting. This year I thought it was quite good and Patrique and Valérie in the bar provided skewers of chicken, mushrooms and slices of quiche to go with it, all on the house. It made for a convivial evening.

I had two suggestions to make for the carols this year. The first was to make more of an introduction to each carol than the usual “and now we will sing…..”. I feel there should be more time between each carol. The second, because we now have a repertoire of over a dozen with which we are all familiar, whether in English, French, German or Latin,was to get the audience to chose one of those in the repertoire but not in the programme. We try to get the audience singing along with us and this would increase audience participation. I'm not sure yet whether these will be accepted but have been researching the history of carols anyway to get the story behind those we will sing. One interesting point to emerge is that carols weren't sung in churches in England until late in the 19^th century. They were sung long before then but in the streets, the age old tradition of wassailing. The word “carol” itself originally meant a dance in a circle so the origins are specifically jollity rather than religion. It points up a different attitude to religion between Britain and France. We Brits sing primarily for the conviviality; the fact that most, but not all, carols are religious is incidental to many of us. For the French, the religious connotations can be a serious inhibition. Many of my French friends who would like to sing won't join in because of the hard religious-secular divide in France.

I've been creating the Christmas quiz for the Beaumont library for two years now and have developed a structure. The total of around 100 questions is divided into around 10 sections, each section with a theme. After grouping potential questions under each theme I review them to try to ensure that there are two hard questions and two dead easy ones in each section; and therein lies the perennial problem: personal knowledge. What seems easy or difficult to me isn't necessarily so for anyone else. I just have to hope that, over 100 questions, the differences even out.

Another sign that Christmas is approaching is that Roberto has started offering a seafood platter, oysters and prawns, as an alternative to the Monday evening pizzas at the Bar du Pont. Oysters figure prominently in the traditional French Christmas meals. And with Christmas comes winter. Snow is forecast tomorrow down to 1000ft; the ski station at Mt Serein will be pleased but the road to the summit of Mt Ventoux is already cut off. I hope the snow stays up there. Even so, you can hardly get out of the village without getting to 1000ft so I'd better check my tyres.