Christmas in Paris

Unlike the English (or the Americans), the French don't dream of a white Christmas. Snow doesn't arrive here, if it arrives at all, until February. But with December usually cold and, often, rainy, celebrations emphasize staying in, eating big and partying long.

Children don't hang up stockings by the chimney but put out shoes (or boots if they're greedy). Though Christmas trees are becoming more common, most people, particularly in apartment-living Paris, just arrange a creche of cardboard figures or statuettes - santons - on the mantelpiece. Christmas dinner traditionally begins with fresh oysters from the Atlantic coast, served, somewhat bizarrely to non-French tastes, with small fried sausages. After that, a slice of foie gras, probably with a glass of sauternes - another acquired taste - followed by roast beef or pork, sometimes goose, but less often turkey. Then cake, cheese, more wine...

Christmas is not the big holiday break of Anglo-Saxon countries - the French do their serious relaxing in August - but it lasts at least until Le Revillon, as they call the New Years' celebration, when the noisier Parisians gather in the Champs-Elysèes or Place de la Concorde to count down to midnight. Christmas decorations traditionally stay up until Twelfth Night, then are ritually trashed. But long before then, France is well and truly back at work.