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France’s Best Christmas Markets: A Grinch’s Guide

You don’t have to like Christmas to come here, but it helps

Ryan Frawley
Globetrotters

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Strasbourg Christmas Market lit up at night with the Gothic Cathedral in the background.
Strasbourg Christmas Market. Photo by author.

I don’t like Christmas.

Christopher Hitchens once likened the experience of living through December to the atmosphere of a one-party state, with its “insistent din of identical propaganda and identical music. The collectivization of gaiety and the compulsory infliction of joy.”

It’s forced fun, a contradiction in terms that I’ve never been able to square. Tell me to have a good time, and you guarantee I won’t.

But I do like Christmas markets.

I’ve never been much of a shopper, and rarely buy anything besides food and drink. But that’s enough. To stand outside in the winter chill with the warmth of a mug of mulled wine spreading slowly through your chest is an experience I look forward to every year. And since Christmas markets are often located in some of the most beautiful parts of European cities, they’re a way to bring some light and life to the heart of a pretty place on the darkest nights of the year.

They also provide a reason to travel at a time of year where I’m ordinarily more tempted to stay indoors.

The deals aren’t what they used to be

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