Thanksgiving, I am convinced, is best celebrated abroad.
Okay, there are a few disadvantages, even beyond the obvious absence of family and friends. Canned pumpkin, for example, is almost impossible to find beyond our borders except in world capitals boasting a large American expat community, and even then it’s a brutish Hobbesian struggle to get your hands on any before limited supplies vanish. Ditto cranberry sauce. And then there’s the stubborn refusal of foreign governments to recognize our four-day weekend – unless you’re self-employed, you have to take a vacation day in order to wallow in the overstuffed hung-over bliss of the Friday after.
But the advantages far outweigh the shortcomings. For a start, living abroad means there are no expectations, apart from calling your mother. Don’t like those candied yams? Does anyone? No matter. Don’t like Aunt Margery? She’s thousands of miles away. Daunted by spending a week picking over leftover dried out turkey meat and battling the supposedly mythological but all-too-real L-tryptophan induced stupor? No worries. As long as you don’t invite any other Americans, you can just roast a chicken. No one will know the difference. Celebrating Thanksgiving abroad means you can honor the traditions as selectively as you like. You can even make up a few, although from personal experience I would advise against trying to convince your six-year-old that Santa Claus has a less-talented brother known as Turkey Claus. Being ridiculed by a six-year-old is not pretty.
So, unshackled from the burden of tradition and constrained by Sebastian’s school schedule, we had our Thanksgiving Thursday dinner last Sunday at lunchtime. Since one of the other pleasures of celebrating the holiday abroad is initiating foreign friends into the tradition (or such bits of it that you choose to observe), we invited David and Claire over with their children, Chloe and Theo.
Having French people over for a meal is not always easy. Most of our neighbors are old-fashioned rural French, and are uncomfortable with being invited over for a meal with someone they aren’t related to and haven’t known for at least 30 years. For an aperitif, maybe after a few years of saying “bonjour” at the bakery, but even that is a stretch.
And then there is the food issue. The French, for all their love of great cuisine, are not terribly open-minded when it comes to foreign food. To vary the ingredients of a traditional dish is heresy, and to serve something outside the accepted French canon is for many, well, beyond the pale. Start waving marshmallow-covered sweet potatoes at them and they are likely to run away screaming. As, quite frankly, they should.
But Davie and Claire are both grew up in more cosmopolitan parts of France and are mercifully flexible. While the kids played and the chickens roasted, we sat down for a drink and I explained to them exactly what Thanksgiving is about. I ran through the history, aided in large part by having watched the Peanuts TV special so many times, and proudly described how it is perhaps the one holiday almost totally unspoiled by commercialism. And if I am guilty of having sidelining some of the darker details – the subsequent war and genocide against the Native Americans, the grotesque spectacle of shoppers throttling each other in the Friday sales – let’s just say that this holiday is about being thankful for the good, not dwelling on the evil. It’s already enough that they braved the succotash.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Where there's smoke...
Having grown up in LA, I have very fond memories of childhood winters. After summer’s unbearable heat and autumn’s furious winds and wildfires, I found myself yearning for cool cloudy days, for nights that closed in well before dinnertime, for the occasional rainy afternoon by the fire. I remember making popcorn to snack on while I watched the rain fall, wrapped in a warm sweatshirt and listening to the occasional sizzle of the reliable three-hour-burn Duraflame log. Mom would bake cookies while I, always the romantic, imagined our late-60’s Spanish-style house to be an ancient thatched cottage tucked away in the English countryside. In a land of endless freeways and almost no rainfall, I appreciated all things cozy.
These days I’m up to mes oreilles in cozy, and it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Cozy, in the context of a picturesque medieval farmhouse nestled among the hills and dales of the Quercy countryside, turns out to be hard work. We all picture the obvious: outside are crumbling stone walls and magnificent old trees dripping with November rain, inside it’s all hand-knit sweaters, warm cups of tea and a roaring fire comfortable filling the enormous open hearth. All great stuff, for which we are grateful every single day. But that fire…
For a start, let’s get it out in the open, fireplaces do not heat your house. Eighty percent of all the heat that’s produced goes right up the chimney, bounces off the stratosphere, and returns to Earth somewhere in the Arctic where it feebly conspires with the oil industry to discomfort polar bears. Our enormous medieval cantou, the local rendition of the Inglenook hearth, is big enough to climb into because that’s precisely what they used to do before central heating. The cantou traditionally would have had a cooking pot suspended in the middle and a chair to either side in which the grandparents could sit to keep warm. The rest of the family kept warm by working hard in the fields until they reached old age, probably at forty, and earned their turn by the fire.
Given that its nominal heat production renders it essentially ornamental, the fireplace is awfully high maintenance. We don’t need to sit by it; we can keep perfectly warm all day by ferrying in the enormous logs that it consumes like potato chips. It makes me wistful for those Duraflames.
Better, on that score, is the lovely old Godin wood-burning stove in the dining room. This quaint green-enameled piece of 19th century technology gives off much more heat with much less wood. But that wood must be cut into 45 cm sections and not be too thick; the hours I spend with a chainsaw every week sculpting little logs to fit into the Godin’s narrow jaws are gratifying to my sense of machismo and affinity for country life, but quite frankly I could do without them. At least the Godin is happy when I feed it; it thanks me by belching large quantities of smoke into the dining room.
Nonetheless here I sit, my laptop warming my legs, my clothing reeking of smoke, happily entering what will be our fourth French winter by the fire. Like every year, Sophia and I are discussing the option of using our magnificent medieval fireplace to frame a modern wood-burner that would actually keep us warm. But despite the absurdity of all this chopping, carrying and choking in homage of a romantic ideal, we won’t do it. Sitting here by the fire, sooty and reeking of smoke, watching the logs disappear as fast as the raindrops hit the drafty single-glazed window, it’s just too damned cozy.
These days I’m up to mes oreilles in cozy, and it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Cozy, in the context of a picturesque medieval farmhouse nestled among the hills and dales of the Quercy countryside, turns out to be hard work. We all picture the obvious: outside are crumbling stone walls and magnificent old trees dripping with November rain, inside it’s all hand-knit sweaters, warm cups of tea and a roaring fire comfortable filling the enormous open hearth. All great stuff, for which we are grateful every single day. But that fire…
For a start, let’s get it out in the open, fireplaces do not heat your house. Eighty percent of all the heat that’s produced goes right up the chimney, bounces off the stratosphere, and returns to Earth somewhere in the Arctic where it feebly conspires with the oil industry to discomfort polar bears. Our enormous medieval cantou, the local rendition of the Inglenook hearth, is big enough to climb into because that’s precisely what they used to do before central heating. The cantou traditionally would have had a cooking pot suspended in the middle and a chair to either side in which the grandparents could sit to keep warm. The rest of the family kept warm by working hard in the fields until they reached old age, probably at forty, and earned their turn by the fire.
Given that its nominal heat production renders it essentially ornamental, the fireplace is awfully high maintenance. We don’t need to sit by it; we can keep perfectly warm all day by ferrying in the enormous logs that it consumes like potato chips. It makes me wistful for those Duraflames.
Better, on that score, is the lovely old Godin wood-burning stove in the dining room. This quaint green-enameled piece of 19th century technology gives off much more heat with much less wood. But that wood must be cut into 45 cm sections and not be too thick; the hours I spend with a chainsaw every week sculpting little logs to fit into the Godin’s narrow jaws are gratifying to my sense of machismo and affinity for country life, but quite frankly I could do without them. At least the Godin is happy when I feed it; it thanks me by belching large quantities of smoke into the dining room.
Nonetheless here I sit, my laptop warming my legs, my clothing reeking of smoke, happily entering what will be our fourth French winter by the fire. Like every year, Sophia and I are discussing the option of using our magnificent medieval fireplace to frame a modern wood-burner that would actually keep us warm. But despite the absurdity of all this chopping, carrying and choking in homage of a romantic ideal, we won’t do it. Sitting here by the fire, sooty and reeking of smoke, watching the logs disappear as fast as the raindrops hit the drafty single-glazed window, it’s just too damned cozy.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Armistice Day
Yesterday Montcabrier, along with the rest of France, paused to commemorate Armistice Day.
I have to confess, we don’t always make it to village events. I suppose the curse of running your own business is the ever-present feeling that there is something you should be doing, something more important than whatever is going on out there in the big wide world. But today we were determined, so a little before 11:00 we hopped in the car and wound our way up to the square.
There, gathered in front of the church, were between 50-75 of our fellow “Cabrimontains,” as inhabitants of Montcabrier are called. The mayor, the two schoolteachers, and the baker’s wife were all there, as were assorted parents of Sebastian’s classmates and a handful of other villagers, both friends and strangers. After a few minutes of saying bonjour, of handshakes and bisous, Jean-Pierre the mayor corralled everyone over to the Monument des Morts.
Montcabrier’s war memorial is a stone obelisk bearing eighteen names of men from this tiny village who gave their lives for France during the First and Second World Wars. It is smaller than many a tombstone, so we all gathered closely around under the large mulberry tree to hear Jean-Pierre give the customary speech. To one side remained a cluster of seven children, some with flowers. As Jean-Pierre spoke, the children looked on, quiet and solemn, trying with their little brains to follow the mayor’s words on war and sacrifice, on honor and tragedy. It was a scene out of a sentimental French film.
Except that among those little standard-bearers of tomorrow’s France was my son.
It seemed strange to me at first. Setting aside for a moment the color of his passport, what is Sebastian? Half American, half Dutch, he is growing up French. I’m feeling more patriotic than usual these days in the wake of the election, and I could not help, for a moment, feeling uneasy at the thought of my son becoming a little Frenchman. But then Jean-Pierre spoke. The mayor’s speech could have dwelt only on the victories and defeats of his fellow villagers. It could have been a pompous invocation of the greatness of France. Instead he spoke of the sacrifice that so many made to keep France free; not just the Cabrimontains, not just the French, but also of the English and Americans and others who came to France and died by the thousands. He spoke of the African brigades who fought here, far from home. And he even spoke of the newfound hope, felt by so many all over the world, inspired by the election of Barack Obama. As if to underline the point, the commemorative wreath was laid by our village’s eldest veteran, not a Frenchman, but an Englishman who landed in Normandy on D-Day.
Jean-Pierre then read out the list of the men of Montcabrier who had died in the wars, each bearing the familiar-sounding family names of our friends and neighbors. And after each name, “mort pour la France” spoken softly by everyone in the crowd. Dead for France. It was touching, and honest, and humble, and as I watched Sebastian speak the words along with his classmates, his fellow villagers, my angst over his identity faded. If Obama is a post-racial American, then Sebastian is a post-national one. He is Cabrimontain. As the ceremony concluded with its minute of silence and Sebastian ran off to play tag with his classmates in the village square I couldn’t help but think that Cabrimontain is a pretty good thing to be.
I have to confess, we don’t always make it to village events. I suppose the curse of running your own business is the ever-present feeling that there is something you should be doing, something more important than whatever is going on out there in the big wide world. But today we were determined, so a little before 11:00 we hopped in the car and wound our way up to the square.
There, gathered in front of the church, were between 50-75 of our fellow “Cabrimontains,” as inhabitants of Montcabrier are called. The mayor, the two schoolteachers, and the baker’s wife were all there, as were assorted parents of Sebastian’s classmates and a handful of other villagers, both friends and strangers. After a few minutes of saying bonjour, of handshakes and bisous, Jean-Pierre the mayor corralled everyone over to the Monument des Morts.
Montcabrier’s war memorial is a stone obelisk bearing eighteen names of men from this tiny village who gave their lives for France during the First and Second World Wars. It is smaller than many a tombstone, so we all gathered closely around under the large mulberry tree to hear Jean-Pierre give the customary speech. To one side remained a cluster of seven children, some with flowers. As Jean-Pierre spoke, the children looked on, quiet and solemn, trying with their little brains to follow the mayor’s words on war and sacrifice, on honor and tragedy. It was a scene out of a sentimental French film.
Except that among those little standard-bearers of tomorrow’s France was my son.
It seemed strange to me at first. Setting aside for a moment the color of his passport, what is Sebastian? Half American, half Dutch, he is growing up French. I’m feeling more patriotic than usual these days in the wake of the election, and I could not help, for a moment, feeling uneasy at the thought of my son becoming a little Frenchman. But then Jean-Pierre spoke. The mayor’s speech could have dwelt only on the victories and defeats of his fellow villagers. It could have been a pompous invocation of the greatness of France. Instead he spoke of the sacrifice that so many made to keep France free; not just the Cabrimontains, not just the French, but also of the English and Americans and others who came to France and died by the thousands. He spoke of the African brigades who fought here, far from home. And he even spoke of the newfound hope, felt by so many all over the world, inspired by the election of Barack Obama. As if to underline the point, the commemorative wreath was laid by our village’s eldest veteran, not a Frenchman, but an Englishman who landed in Normandy on D-Day.
Jean-Pierre then read out the list of the men of Montcabrier who had died in the wars, each bearing the familiar-sounding family names of our friends and neighbors. And after each name, “mort pour la France” spoken softly by everyone in the crowd. Dead for France. It was touching, and honest, and humble, and as I watched Sebastian speak the words along with his classmates, his fellow villagers, my angst over his identity faded. If Obama is a post-racial American, then Sebastian is a post-national one. He is Cabrimontain. As the ceremony concluded with its minute of silence and Sebastian ran off to play tag with his classmates in the village square I couldn’t help but think that Cabrimontain is a pretty good thing to be.
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