A Winter Christmas

Or… a guilt-free Christmas! There’s nothing like a fuzzy Christmas jumper to hide the multiple glasses of eggnog and a huge Christmas lunch. The holiday season just seems ‘right’ in the Northern Hemisphere. Despite my only previous experience of enjoying the holidays in the height of summer, I have fully indulged in the ‘cosy’ Christmas experience.

As a family, we have skipped most of the last three winters by hemisphere hopping and while it has been a shock to the system to be enduring more than a month of cold weather, it was lovely to be able to do it in the lead up to Christmas. The busyness of the holiday season is a great distraction from the plummeting temperatures. Hours spent at the shops preparing for Christmas are a warming retreat. Spending an entire afternoon decorating the Christmas tree is the perfect way to pass another day in-doors. And, my favourite of all, the early setting sun is the best reason to get outside! To rug up and take a stroll through Angoulême on Christmas Eve, with the twinkling lights and the carousels and the mulled wine… It was beautiful.

It might be the Northern Hemisphere or it might just be ‘not New Zealand’, but it was quite a relief to know what weather to expect on Christmas Day. It was going to be chilly, we were going to be eating by the fire, and warming up with hot pastries, eggnog, and an indulgent Christmas lunch. And it was all that we’d hoped. We even had a proper French Christmas, shared with our friend, the children’s French grand-mere, with lots of French spoken around the table, (with most of it actually understood!).

Now that it is behind us, we have been warned the next few months are the hardest! With the joy of Christmas passed, the cold starts to bite. However, I cannot help but think, only 3 more months until the glorious season that is summer in France. Where there are no distractions, no Christmas preparations in the middle of it, an activity that is decidedly best saved for short days keeping warm inside.