A few pre-Christmas notes

After several years of living here, Jan and I seem to have quietly adopted the French approach to Christmas — which is to say, celebrate it, but don’t overdo it.

In the main village square, there is a large and rather nice Christmas tree (previously featured in Radio Free Daglan), but you won’t find any of the over-the-top house decorations that have become the norm in Canada. You know: Inflated Santas, sleds and plastic reindeer on front lawns, coloured lights all over the place.

Our own practice now is to put up a few modest Christmas decorations, while most of the home’s Christmas flavour comes from the holiday cards which we receive and hang up around our living room. This year, however, Jan did find a particularly attractive wreath to hang on the wall just outside our front door. And here it is:

The wreath at our front door.

Jan bought this at the flower shop in neighbouring Cénac where we regularly buy cut flowers, arrangements, and potted decorative plants.The shop is handy, the owner is a pleasant and helpful woman, and it’s close.

Call me hide-bound: But I personally like the idea of Christmas cards that are printed on actual paper. I know that electronic messages can be attractive and clever, but they arrive, are admired for 10 seconds, and then disappear.

On the other hand, paper cards arrive in the mail, when very few other items do these days. And they last. And they can be used to decorate the house, by stringing them up. So each year I write out 50 or 60 addresses on envelopes, and Jan and I write something inside each card, and off they go to the Post Office. And we look forward to receiving the cards from family members and friends.

As a very small side note, my favourite address to write each Christmas is for a friend in Toronto who lives on — wait for it — Yule Avenue! Is that Christmassy, or what?

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