Almost there

‘Twas the week before Christmas and a new nativity scene appears to cause controversy in the village. Plus a recipe for rabbit with prunes and chestnuts which you can make with chicken if you want.

The house lit up with fairy lights. Too much? Not enough?

We’re in the days of carol concerts, festive parades through the village, children enjoying carousel rides on the port, and drinks with neighbours in the Christmas chalets encircling the statue of Marianne in front of the town hall. Marianne doesn’t look like she’s enjoying the company. She’s more solid and serious than some of the statues of this symbol of the victorious Republic that grace town squares all over France. She certainly looks more capable of bringing in a harvest than the busts of more recent years, for which Marianne was modelled on Brigitte Bardot and then Catherine Deneuve. But somehow, we enjoy our bowls of crab soup and plates of aligot beneath her stern gaze anyway.

Crab soup from the Chez Titin shack in the Christmas market.

And honestly, there are bigger issues to occupy us. For as long as we have lived here, and no doubt decades before that, the Christmas nativity scene occupied the Twelfth Century covered market in front of the Spar supermarket. It comprised an idiosyncratic assembly of figures, from the Holy Family and Wise Men surrounded by huge animatronic beasts, to a lavender woman, a wine maker and an oyster farmer. Real chickens, geese and goats livened up the spectacle with their bleating and pecking and squawking.

But all mad things must come to an end.

A month or so ago, there was a rumour that the nativity scene was going to be replaced by a brand new spectacle. I am a Cancerian. I hate change. I was also reminded of the words of my late, brilliant, funny friend Nick, who was the king of the Hackney Historical Society and deeply involved in all matters of what I believe we now call The Built Environment. One evening we were discussing some new development or other in Stoke Newington where we both lived, a development that included “luxury” flats and some other nonsense no one needed or asked for, and he said: “Why can’t we let things stay a little bit shit?” I don’t think I’ve ever believed in anything more powerfully in my life. My heart hurts when I see lovely old windows replaced by aluminium ones, or wooden shutters tossed in a skip and replaced with metal roller blinds. Some of my best friends are walls of peeling paint.

[There’s a short video of the original nativity scene on this post from 2022, below.]

Because apparently brandy butter is not a complete food

The replacement of the old nativity worried me, but I’m new here. It’s none of my business really, I told myself. But then one day, walking Gracie past the church, there was activity: the construction of the new nativity, a series of trompe l’oeil stone rooms, which had the air of “If the Flintstones did Christmas”. The next morning, they’d been filled with characters, Mary and Joseph and the donkey of course, and then some sort of scenes from Languedocien life – a blacksmith, a maker of wine amphorae, some of them seemingly repurposed from the old nativity. I’m sure the lavender seller has had a glow-up and is now guarding a wine barrel from a rather terrifying horse. Worse, they’re all now behind bars. I’m not sure whether this is to protect them from us or us from them.

The creaking, the terrifying creaking, of the amphora lady. The lavender woman has had a glow up, though that horse is going to kill her. A patient Joseph and Mary.

The old covered market now contains a sort of winter scene and Instagram point of the kind you might find in a shopping mall. There are no live animals.

It made me feel a little sad. If things can’t stay a bit shit at Christmas, when can they? But you know, I’m keeping all of this to myself because as I wandered around an older couple were looking at this all-new festive extravaganza and I overheard the woman saying “C’est magnifique!”

Next morning, I am scrolling the local Facebook group over breakfast and oh, here we are, a hundred people definitely not keeping it to themselves, under the heading of “Bizarre crèche this year”. Many commented that it looked like a prison, a ghost train, that they missed the live animals. One woman remarked that her almost-four-year-old said, “Not this! I’m frightened I don’t like Halloween!” One man enquired if someone had found some special mushrooms? Of course there were those who liked it, and one man made the point that “La critique est facile, l’art est difficile” (criticism is easy, art is difficult). In my experience of working on community projects, it’s certainly true that however hard you work there will be someone along in the minute to tell you “What you need to do is…” when they never pitch in to do anything for anyone else.

While I admire the effort, I miss the old crèche. When years from now, they replace this Flintstones Christmas, I’ll probably miss it too. In the meantime, I’ll keep sipping vin chaud beneath the stern stone gaze of Marianne each Christmas and squeezing into the crowd with my neighbours when Santa Claus arrives on the port by boat. Whatever you’re doing this Christmas, whether it’s Christmas as usual or one that brings new changes and challenges, I hope it brings joy and, if not joy, then peace. Thank you so much for keeping me company this year. I appreciate all of your support, comments, emails and the enthusiasm with which you share our adventures in this special village in the South of France. Joyeux fêtes, dear friends, and I will see you in the brand New Year, knife and fork and pen at the ready.

What I’m listening to…

I love a podcast when I’m pottering about in the kitchen or walking the dogs. This week, I’m loving Tom Parker Bowles and Henry Jeffreys’ new Intoxicating History, which explores the drama, stories and scandals behind some of the world’s best beloved drinks. The second episode is awash with booze in Charles Dickens London, so it’s a great listen while you’re doing your Christmas prep – but go back and listen to the first one too, a fascinating history of port.

Lapin aux prunes et aux marrons

Rabbit with prunes and chestnuts

I know some people are twitchy about rabbit and I’ve avoided writing recipes for it here, even though rabbit dishes play a big part in traditional French cooking. But I couldn’t resist sharing this recipe with you here because it contains so many ingredients I love and have hanging about at this time of year – prunes, chestnuts, cognac, dried mushrooms, pain d’épice (see NOTE, below the recipe), lots of the things I often put in the stuffing for the bird, actually. And with this in mind, while I encourage you to try rabbit, this recipe is great made with chicken too.

I realise this looks like a long recipe, but every step is very simple and I like to explain in detail what you should do, what things should look like, so literally a child could make it (might need a little supervision during the flambéing, but maybe not – I’ve been successfully setting fire to food unsupervised for more than four decades and honestly very little has gone wrong). There’s been a trend in recipe publishing over the past twenty years or so to make recipes very short so readers will think they’re simple and quick. In many cases, you can only do this by leaving out helpful – sometimes essential – instructions and when the recipe goes wrong, the reader often thinks it’s their fault when it’s not. I like to arm you with all the information you need so every recipe will be exactly the same, just as good, whether it’s made in your kitchen or mine.

Serves six