What the French eat at Christmas - Taste of Savoie (2024)

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What the French eat at Christmas - Taste of Savoie? ›

What the French eat at Christmas. The main Christmas meal is called The Reveillon and consists of luxurious and the more extravagant foods found in France. The Reveillon is a long meal, the aperitif is often blinis with smoked salmon and caviar.

Christmas Dinner

Dishes might include roast turkey with chestnuts or roast goose, oysters, foie gras, lobster, venison and cheeses. For dessert, a chocolate sponge cake log called a bûche de Noël is normally eaten. Another celebration, in some parts of France, is that 13 different desserts are eaten!

The Christmas meal

Appetizers may include oysters, foie gras, smoked salmon or escargots, accompanied by Champagne or good white wine. The main event is generally roast poultry—turkey or capon—served with chestnuts or even truffles.

Families and friends exchange small gifts and celebrate with elaborate dinners and parties. Le Réveillon is a traditional late-night feast or party held when families return from la Messe de Minuit (Midnight Mass) on Christmas Eve.

France's Christmas breakfast is full of sweet pastries. Many families will partake in pain au chocolat, croissants and brioche doughnuts.

Bûche de Noël is a traditional French Christmas dessert shaped and decorated like a log. This recipe takes some time, but we promise it's worth it.

Families usually kick things off by opening a bottle of fine Champagne, like the Champagne Paul Michel. Others may choose to begin with a traditional method French Crémant from the Loire, Limoux or Burgundy and bring out the Champagne later in the meal.

Public life on Christmas Day is generally quiet. Post offices, banks, stores, restaurants, cafés and other businesses are closed. Many people in France put up a Christmas tree, visit a special church service, eat an elaborate meal and open gifts on Christmas Eve.

On Christmas morning, French children open their gifts from Père Noël that were left in their shoes or under the tree. After Christmas. The French celebrate the arrival of the 3 Kings during La Fête des Rois on January 6^th. The Galette des Rois, or King's cake, is a treat served for the Epiphany.

Why do French eat seafood at Christmas? ›

The tradition of a seafood dinner on December 24th actually stems from a time when seafood and particularly oysters were the food of the poor, so having a few dozen oysters for dinner was seen as a 'fasting' day before the major Christmas feast.

Families usually kick things off by opening a bottle of fine Champagne, like the Champagne Paul Michel. Others may choose to begin with a traditional method French Crémant from the Loire, Limoux or Burgundy and bring out the Champagne later in the meal.

The main focus of the traditional réveillon was the food. The menu varied from family to family, but common dishes included tourtière (a meat pie made with pork and beef or veal), ragoût de boulettes (meatballs in brown gravy), les pattes de porc (pigs' feet cooked slowly until incredibly tender), and potatoes.