CHRISTMAS IN PROVENCE, FRANCE: CENTURIES-OLD TRADITIONS AND CELEBRATIONS ROOTED IN FRENCH HISTORY©

 

With the Holiday Season underway all around the world, my thoughts turn to one of my favourite places, Provence, located in the south of France.  It is particularly charming and beautiful at this time of year, and includes many unique traditions -- some of which are centuries-old.

Christmas Decorations along Cours Mirabeau
in Aix-en-Provence
Photo Provenance unknown

In Provence, the Christmas Season is called “La Calendale“.  It starts on the 4th of December, the day of the patron Sainte Barbe, i.e., Saint Barbara. (SIDE NOTE: the French calendar attributes most days of the year to a different patron Saint.)  The overall Season ends on the following February 2nd at Candlemas, although Christmas observances and festivities in Provence culminate on the 24th and 25th of December.

According to tradition, the Provençal Christmas season begins on December 4th every year, the day of the patron Sainte Barbe, Saint Barbara’s Day.  This  is when families fill three small dishes—three representing the Trinity—with wet cotton balls sprinkled with wheat or lentil seeds. These seeds are kept moist in the hopes that they will sprout.  Twenty days later, on December 24th, if the wheat or lentil shoots have grown straight and green, the young shoots are wrapped in yellow and red ribbons, and the finest crop is placed on the Christmas table and believed to be a sign that there will be a good harvest or a positive financial outlook the next year.  On the following day, Christmas Day, the wrapped shoots are used to decorate the Nativity scene, remainging there to thrive until Epiphany in January.  Thereafter, the sprouted shoots are planted.

Towns all over France have Nativity Scenes called crèches, but in Provence they are uniquely different because they don't depict Jesus, Mary, and Joseph surrounded by the Wise Men. Instead, the "crèche provençal" is filled with santons, which are adorable little figurines that depict characters from village life like the baker and the fishwife. This is because the display of crèches, like much of religious life, was banned during the French Revolution which forbade public nativities.

Consequently, “private” nativities developed in Provençal homes. A clever artist from Marseille, Jean Louis Lagnel, a native of Marseille, invented "santons" in 1800 and turned the crèche into a village scene using his figurines instead of the usual Biblical characters. These miniature figurines originally were made from moulds and used crustless bread. This tradition was passed down from father to son with a great deal of secrecy from the 19th Century onwards. Ironically, the anti-religious zealots of the French Revolution somehow missed the fact that the word santon means “little saint.” Today, the santons are generally made from either argyle or earthenware and are painted and dressed.  The profession of Santonnier is now recognized as a traditional Provençal craft.

Parades take place all over Provence during the Christmas season, with songs played on fifes and tambourines and townspeople in traditional dress.  Especially popular is the lady’s Arlésienne outfit, a long, flowing dress with scarves over the shoulders, and hair pinned up. One of the most entertaining parades is La Bravade Calendale of Aix-en-Provence which originated during the mid-13th Century in the year 1256 instituted by Charles 1st of Anjou, Count of Provence, upon his returning from the Crusade with his brother Saint Louis. It marks the Winter Solstice (St. John the Evangelist), the longest night of the year. Very close to Christmas, the "Winter Saint John" celebrates the passage to the new year.  Parade participants are dressed in colourful costumes, some prance about dressed as dancing horses, young men with huge flags spin and hurl the flags in the air like jugglers, and the procession includes music, games and dances.

This event is also a reminder of the custom of The Offering, when in the past on Christmas Day, groups of musicians would go around to the town's authorities, offering them, to the tune of music, the "Christmas oil pump" that the Provençals are so fond of, and using a multitude of more than 200 actors from all over the region performing in the Provençal tradition with blunderbusses and who enliven the Aix with splendour and colour.

La Bravade Calendale
in Aix-en-Provence

The traditional Christmas Dinner in Provence, known as Le Gros Souper, The Great Supper, occurs on Christmas Eve.  The Dinner concludes with Les Treize Desserts (The 13 Desserts).  Like many Christmas traditions, it is full of religious symbolism—13 representing the number of people at the Last Supper -- Jesus and the 12 Apostles.  Before the Midnight Mass, this meal is served on three white tablecloths of different sizes, with three candelabras on the table representing the Holy Trinity, and three wheat saucers filled with the spouts from the seeds planted on Saint Barbara's Day, twenty days earlier on December 4th.  The composition of the desserts varies according to region, canton, city and even family, and generally includes fresh and candied fruit, nougats, and fruit pastes.  It is traditional to set an extra place setting for the poor man (le pauvre) which refers to someone who has died, but it can also be a beggar who passes by and asks for alms. The poor man’s share is a reminder of the story of the Holy Family, who found no one to welcome them that night.

Traditional Provence Christmas Eve Dinner Table
with the 13 Desserts
Photo Credit: Véronique Pagnier 

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(Primary Sources and Photo credits:  Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur Tourism Board;  Provence Days;  French Moments; Véronique Pagnier; The Good Life France;  Perfectly Provence;  aixenprovence.fr) 

©2023 Snobby Tours®, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

"THE WALLIS": CELEBRATING ITS 10th YEAR AS THE PREMIER PERFORMING ARTS VENUE IN BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA©

In 2014, we published our first Snobby Tours® Travelblog article on The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, more often referred to as "The Wallis", shortly after it opened to the public in October of 2013.

The Wallis, the first performing arts center to be built in City of Beverly Hills, transformed an entire Beverly Hills city block near the Civic Center into a vibrant new cultural destination with TWO distinct, elegant buildings -- and was completed in time for its 2013-2014 Inaugural Season to correspond with Beverly Hills' Centennial Celebration marking the 100th birthday of the City's incorporation.

The most notable of the two buildings is the much loved historic 1933 Italianate-style Beverly Hills Post Office built as a WPA project during the Franklin Roosevelt administration.  For decades some of Beverly Hills' most recognizable residents from film and television kept post office boxes there, such as Fred Astaire and Jimmy Stewart.

Also in 2013, the City of Beverly Hills designated the Beverly Hills Post Office as a historical landmark, under the City's new Historic Preservation Ordinance.  The building had previously received designation on the National Register of Historic Places by the US Department of the Interior.

Seven years later, in 2021, we "revisited" The Wallis in an update for our Travelblog, and explored its interesting architectural additions to the original Post Office building.

A striking 70,000 sq. ft. building, The Wallis itself is an excellent example of "constructivism architecture", a futuristic-looking style which developed in the 1920s and 1930s in the former Soviet Union that combined technology and engineering, and applied a 3-dimensional Cubist vision to entire abstract non-objective constructions by adding a kinetic element.

Although this movement in artistic expression borrowed ideas from the Cubism and Futurism movements, the interpretation in architectural expression for The Wallis superimposed ideas from the Bauhaus, Suprematism and Neo-Plasticism movements.

The façade of The Wallis, comprised of fiber cement, is evocative of envelopes being sorted -- an homage to the historic Post Office on the same site.

During the past 10 years, The Wallis has garnered six prestigious architectural awards, including a Los Angeles Architectural Civic Award and an AIA California Council Merit Award for Design in the Adaptive Reuse/Renovation/Historic Preservation category.  The original 1933 Post Office building contains eight towering fresco murals which are one of two sets of WPA frescos remaining in the entire California Federal Building system.

Additionally, The Wallis has come to be recognized as a dynamic cultural hub and community resource where local, national, and international artists share their artistry with ever-expanding audiences.  Distinguished by its eclectic programming that mirrors the diverse landscape of Los Angeles and its location in the entertainment capital of the world, The Wallis has produced and presented more than 400 theater, dance, music, film, cabaret, comedy, performance arts, and family entertainment programs, boasting nominations for 79 Ovation Awards, and for 9 L.A. Drama Critics Circle Awards.

NOTE:  "The Wallis"  is included in our "Los Angeles Architecture -- An Eclectic Landscape"©  custom-designed itinerary. For more information about this unique and comprehensive heritage and cultural tour covering L.A.'s architectural history from "early settlement to the present", visit us at http://www.snobbytours.com/EclecticLAarchitecture.html  

Reservations close on February 15th of the specified calendar year that we offer this Tour.

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(Primary sources and photo credits:  thewallis.org; stageandcinema.com; archdaily.com; spfa.com; John Edward Linden Photography)

©2023 Snobby Tours®, Inc. All Rights Reserved.