In France, the main event of the festive season is the Christmas “réveillon”. The extended family and friends gather to have a big feast on 24 December.
Here’s our guide to an authentic French Christmas.
French traditions
On 24 December, the Christmas dinner is a long affair. It starts around the same time as usual, around 8 PM, but will often last way past midnight.
The “réveillon” is time to splurge and get all your favourite food out. Start with seafood like lobster, oysters and coquille Saint-Jacques, as well as canapés with foie gras and snails. Oh and a good bottle of wine or Champagne, of course.
Oysters in Champagne sabayon Source: Benito Martin
Later in the night, get out the big guns. The most traditional main is a turkey stuffed with chestnuts, but you could also prepare a goose, capon or any game meat. Finish up with an assortment of the best French cheeses.
For dessert, you can’t go pass a Yule log, a rolled sponge cake that’s made to look like a log.
Yule log (bûche de Noël) Source: Alan Benson
If you celebrate all night and have the time to be hungry again around 4 or 5 am, it's time for a comforting onion soup.
Get a few hours of sleep and when you wake up on the 25th, you could have your Australian Christmas… Or keep embracing the French way. That would mean having friends over to eat the leftovers or cooking a simple, but hearty lunch like coq au vin, rabbit or vols-au-vent.
Coq-au-vin Source: SBS Food
To each region its own traditions
While French people share a lot of the same culinary traditions, each region also has its own.
Provence has the 13 desserts, a reference to Jesus and its 12 apostles. It means that after the massive meal of the 24th, there are 13 types of desserts at the table like nougat, mendiants, fruits and fougasse bread with grape jam.
In Alsace, goose and foie gras are preferred to turkey, and gingerbread is eaten for dessert.
In Paris, it’s all about seafood, caviar, butter, nice bread and Champagne.
Homard lobster baked in corail butter. (SBS Food) Source: SBS Food
Traditions from the SBS French team
We might all speak French, the SBS French team comes from many regions of France and the world. As such, we grew up with slightly different Christmas culinary traditions.
Christophe, from Paris, France: "As a Parisian, many times we actually spent Christmas in the Alps, it was a family tradition, so food-wise our traditional Christmas was more raclette and fondues than turkey or goose, but foie gras was and still is always a staple."
Joanna, from Saint Barthélemy: “In the French Antilles, the culinary traditions are a bit different than on the continent. We have a rum-based Christmas cocktail that we call ‘Schrub’ after the Midnight Mass. You also drink Ti punch all evening. We eat Creole blood sausage as a starter and smoked or pineapple ham as a main. And for dessert, the famous coconut blancmange.”
Fondue (Creative Commons) Source: CC0 Creative Commons
Jean-Noël, from Mauritius: “I grew up in Australia, so our Christmas traditions were very Anglo-Saxon; turkey, ham, seafood, pavlova and trifle.”
Mathilde, from Limousin, France: “Our traditions are quite similar to the rest of France. We also make frozen chestnuts and potato pie, which is delicious and invigorating. We don’t eat it on the night of the “réveillon”, but around that time. Same goes for stuffed cabbage and pot-au-feu. On 1 January, we’ll often eat onion soup, especially if we had a bit too much Champagne the night before…”
Bertrand, from Rwanda: “There’s no Christmas speciality, but we eat very well on that day, and a lot. In Rwanda, like almost everywhere in Africa, you don’t wait to be invited by friends or family. It seems pretentious. You just show up. Christmas is a bit like a practice run for NYE. NYE, that’s the big party.”
Source: Alan Benson
Audrey, from Québec, Canada: We kept a lot of the French traditions like the stuffed turkey, the foie gras and the Yule log. We also have tourtière and cipaille, which are different types of meat pies and cranberry sauce. Lately, my family has been more into cassoulet and duck confit.
Our favourite French recipes for the holidays:
