Let's the Holiday Season begins......
To decorate for Christmas is a ritual repeated year after year and we have been following the Swedish tradition of 1st Advent. This means that the 4th weekend before Christmas Eve we decorate the house except for the Christmas tree, which comes a little bit later. Yesterday we went to the local flower shop to buy amaryllis, hyacinths and poinsettia, a MUST in our home.
In Provence the Christmas means a blend of ancient and new traditions. The shops are overloaded with all the new decorations while you can still see a lot of nativity scenes called crèches, where the local families usually set up elaborated villages around the stable with all of the town’s people outside. On Christmas day, parents tell their children stories about each of the statues in their family Nativity scene pointing out how each person brought their best gifts to the Christ-child in gratitude of the Good God. The stories end with an explanation of how the people were turned into statues. These statutes are called santons, a word from the Provencal “santoun” that means “small saint.
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