subject: How to Celebrate Christmas on 24th December French Style [print this page] How to Celebrate Christmas on 24th December French Style
With Christmas toys and presents wrapped and carefully placed under the tree it's time to prepare the meal. As Christmas for the French is as much, if not more about the food, this is a family feast of an occasion prepared with love. The way the French dress the dinner table is just as important as the food itself, with every detail in place to ensure that the most important meal of the year looks and tastes as fabulous as possible.
Start by dressing the table with a high quality Christmas tablecloth, crisp cotton napkins and heavy, high quality cutlery. Dot your tea light holders and candles around the table to add a little magic to the festive scene and make sure that glassware is gleaming. Large white plates are a stylish choice, professional and polished whatever dish you're serving, but especially stunning with the traditional seafood platter in the Poitou Charente region. In fact, French women often comment more on the way a table is laid than the food being served, so it's important to get this right, if you want to host an authentic French Christmas for your new neighbours and friends. Once you've prepared your seafood platter of oysters, langoustines, bulots and smoked salmon on a pretty serving plate, cut open a few lemons, open the champagne or a crisp Muscadet and toast Christmas with your loved ones from glistening glassware.
When you live in France this evening is a wonderful, indulgent part of expat life and a welcome change from spending Christmas Eve at the local pub. In return, spending quality time together before Christmas Day makes everyone feel part of the preparations and creates a really special family meal to cherish. And if, like lots of retired British expats living in France, you have grandchildren arriving from England, they need only a gentle reminder to make sure Christmas stockings are hung up neatly in rows by the fireside waiting for Pere Noel to pop down the chimney. The twinkling Christmas decorations will do the rest while you sit back and soak up the most convivial ambience of a French Christmas.
