The municipalities have started hanging their Christmas lights throughout the Paris region. Stores are slowly bringing in their holiday items. Le Bon Marché's Christmas display is delighting passerbyers in the 7th arrondissement. Unless you are living in a cave, you cannot miss the fact that the holidays are upon us.
Thanksgiving and Christmas this year will be spent here in France. While exciting, I will miss spending time with family and friends. Around this time last year, Thomas and I were planning what to have for Thanksgiving dinner and deciding when to have our Christmas party. Here in France, because they don't really celebrate Thanksgiving and they don't really have an autumn, I feel a bit cheated out of a full, festive, family oriented holiday season. But maybe the US has always prolonged the holiday season a bit too long. I heard Christmas decorations were up before Halloween.
We are trying to get into the holiday spirit. Thomas and I went to the Christmas Market at the American Church. Lots of crafters (my mom would have fit right in). It was small, but we did manage to find some Christmas cards. They were also serving Filipino food, of all things, so Thomas and I had pork adobo, lumpia (egg rolls), and leche flan (the Filipino version of creme brulée). That's about as close to family/home I am going to get around here for now.
Thanksgiving will be spent at a restaurant this year. A nice restaurant near La Place de la Madeleine, but there will be neither turkey, nor pumpkin pie, nor stuffing. Even when I was in West Africa, the peace corps volunteers managed to assemble a traditional Thanksgiving meal. There is no excuse for us to not have it here in France. I will start planning now to have this stuff on our Christmas menu.
Other random item for the day:
We ended our Paris excursion at La Bon Marché épicerie (fancy grocery store). Their American section included chocolate syrup for 8.5 euros (~11 USD), Newman's salsa was 7 euros (~9 USD), and croutons were 5.40 euros (~7 USD). They did have canned pumpkin and the British section had Campbell's cream of mushroom soup. We can definitely make pumpkin pie and my favorite holiday dish - green bean casserole, but I might have to spend a week's salary on the American meal!