As you can imagine by the altitude of our location, Christmas at La Verrière is beautifully snowy, cosy and magical. It’s the season for truffle hunting and skiing but there are also fascinating and absolutely adorable Christmas traditions in Provence that we recommend looking out for. The Christmas period in this region stretches from 4th December to 2nd February which helps to make a stay in Provence in the winter so special. Here are some Christmas highlights:
Sainte-Barbe Wheat
Christmas in Provence really begins on St Barbara’s Day, 4th December. Although this saint is the patron of miners and fireworks, this day is when people put wheat seeds in pots lined with damp cotton. If these seeds grow into green shoots by Christmas Eve, it is supposed to predict an abundant harvest the next year. Farmers apparently plant this wheat in their fields after Christmas for good luck with their harvest and others use it to decorate their Christmas Creche.
Provence Christmas Crèche
Because religious festivals were banned during the French Revolution, people in Provence stopped being able to perform the Nativity in public so, instead, they created Nativity scenes in their homes. To this day, each family who honours this tradition has their own way of doing it from the elaborate to the simple. Some use locally grown moss to represent the scrubland and others create whole Provencal villages to set the scenes in. These are put up on 4th December and are often populated as the Christmas season goes on to tell the tale, as it were, with the baby Jesus being placed on Christmas Day and the Three Kings on Epiphany, 6th January. They are taken down on Candlemas, 2nd February.
Santons
Populating these Creche scenes are handmade terracotta figures called santons. These started from a fair in Marseille in 1803 and have spread all over Provence. Ranging in size from 2.5cms to 15cms, these adorable figurines represent everyone in the Nativity from the principle characters to local people such as the mayor, doctors, fishmongers, musicians, etc as well as lots of different animals. The creche in Grignan is the biggest in the region with up to 1,000 santons. Lots of Provencal cities, towns and villages also have very impressive ones though.
Christmas Eve Supper
A traditional Christmas Eve supper before Midnight Mass includes seven courses which include no meat only fish and vegetables along with an amazing thirteen desserts. The thirteen desserts refer to Jesus and his twelve apostles and consist of figs, raisins, almonds, dates, nougat, calissons (similar to marzipan), navettes (little biscuits shaped like boats), fresh fruit and candied fruit, etc. The table is supposed to be laid with three white table clothes to represent the Holy Trinity and an empty place laid in case a beggar comes calling or you receive a ghostly visit from your ancestors in the night.
Modern Attractions
Like many places in Europe, Provence has a wide range of Christmas markets popping up over the festive periods, including ones selling santons, notably in Marseille, as well as some wonderful Christmas lights adorning shopping streets and homes alike.
Christmas is indeed a magical time of year and it is particularly so here in Provence.
