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    French Holidays & Traditions
    French Holidays & Traditions
    French Holidays & Traditions
    Ebook128 pages55 minutes

    French Holidays & Traditions

    By Margo Lestz

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    About this ebook

    If you are intrigued by French culture and curious about the history behind French traditions, this book is for you. In it, you'll find a selection of short stories, written in a lively style, which often reveal little-known, but always fascinating facts about French customs. Would you like to know: 



    • Why people have fish on their backs on April 1st? • How the Bastille was taken down? • Who collects teeth from under children's pillows? • Which sport honours the memory of a girl called Fanny? 



    You will discover the fascinating stories behind these and other French traditions. French Holidays & Traditions is made up of twelve chapters – one for each month of the year, and each chapter contains one or two stories. These stories might relate to a holiday observed during that month, or they could relate to a tradition, which may not be associated with any particular date. Then, at the end of each chapter, you will find a list of holidays and observances for that month. A handy reference for a monthly dose of French culture.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPublishdrive
    Release dateSep 6, 2018
    ISBN9780993137129
    French Holidays & Traditions
    Author

    Margo Lestz

    Margo Lestz is American by birth but now divides her time between London, England and Nice, France (with a little bit of Florence, Italy thrown in for good measure). Life in a foreign country is never dull and every day is a new learning experience. She describes herself as a perpetual student and is always taking some kind of course or researching a moment in history that has caught her fancy. She’s curious by nature and always wondering who, what, why, when, where, and how. Margo shares her adventures (and her questions) with Jeff, her husband of many years. She enjoys travel, history, observing cultures and traditions - and then writing about them, of course.

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      Book preview

      French Holidays & Traditions - Margo Lestz

      lecture!

      January

      There's a Bean in My Cake!

      Epiphany - The Celebration of Kings

      If you’re in France in January and eating a piece of pie or cake, chew carefully. One French tradition could cost you a tooth if you’re not paying attention.

      In January, the French eat a special dessert called a galette des rois which contains a little baked-in trinket.  This dessert comes in two versions: one form is similar to a pie, with a flaky crust and an almond filling, and the other is more like a brioche. But both are called galette des rois (or king cake), and both can be hazardous to the teeth of an uninformed diner.

      To discover how this custom of hiding items in cakes began, we have to go back to Roman times and to their winter solstice celebration. They would bake a large loaf of bread with a bean inside it, and the person who found the bean was crowned king for the day.

      The Christian church changed the solstice celebration to the Epiphany and fixed the date as the 6th of January.  With the king for a day theme already established, it became the time to remember the Biblical kings who had presented gifts to the baby Jesus.  Over the years, the bean-in-the-bread turned into a bean-in-the-cake and the cake became known as the galette des rois, or king cake.

      In sixteenth-century Paris, this cake found itself at the centre of a conflict between the boulangeries (or bakeries) and the pâtisseries (or cake shops). They each wanted the sole right to make and sell this special cake with the hidden bean.  The cake shops won and the bakeries were forbidden to make the cakes. But the bakeries weren’t about to give up so easily.  If they were forbidden to make king cakes, then they would simply make king pies. And that is why today there are two distinct versions of the king cake.

      Traditionally, the pie version has been preferred in the north of France and the brioche version in the south. But today you’re likely to pass a bakery window and see both versions displayed side by side (at least in the south of France).

      The Bakery vs Cake Shop War wasn’t the only problem caused by this innocent-looking cake with its hidden bean.  After the French Revolution, in which Louis XVI, the king of France, lost his head, the new leaders of the country wanted to make the king cake illegal. They had just got rid of one king and didn’t want another one – not even a pretend one.  They were seriously considering outlawing the token king custom and arresting anyone who dared to make or sell the king cakes. But after considering the possible public reaction, they came to their senses. They realised that you just don’t mess with a Frenchman’s food or holidays, so the cake with the bean was safe.

      The bean is called a fève in French.  Technically, a fève is a broad bean, which was the original king selector.  But, at the end of the nineteenth century, the beans were replaced by porcelain figurines.  (I can’t help but think that dentists must have come up with that idea.)  Even though the trinkets in the cake are no longer beans, they are still called fèves and they come in a variety of forms.  They might be tiny santons (nativity figures), cartoon characters, or any number of other things.  Some people collect these fèves, and there is even a fève museum in the city of Blain.

      Eating cake with a baked-in fève is an ancient tradition which is still popular today.  At January gatherings, when it’s time to serve the cake, the youngest child gets under the table.  The hostess cuts the cake into as many pieces as there are diners, then she ask the child, Who is this piece for? The child calls out a name and the cake is distributed according to his instructions.  This way there can be no cheating, as he can’t see the fève and play favourites.  Everyone chews their piece of cake slowly, to avoid cracking a tooth, until the fève is found.

      The lucky person who finds the trinket in his cake becomes the king (or queen) for the day.  He gets to wear a paper crown which is supplied with the cake.  The king’s royal responsibility, after choosing his queen, might be to bring another king cake to the next gathering – and that could be the following week, because the French eat these cakes for weeks (in the south).  This way, everyone gets a chance to find the fève, wear the crown, and be king or queen of the party.

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