Holiday season

As suggested by a friend, I started drafting a list of top fifty things I miss most about NYC. I hesitated a bit, as when I left four months ago, I was determined to look ahead and not back, as a means of self-preservation, and so as not to turn into a pillar of fleur de sel. However, given that it is nearly the end of the year, a time for looking back, and that I have not over-indulged in this activity thus far, I started listing away in my tiny moleskin, but only came up with about 25, which has led me to believe that more and more I am learning to appreciate what I have… but more of that later.

In the meantime, I am sure everyone is dying to find out what the holiday season is like in Marseille. Well, the cold certainly is here, and the wind, can rival any NYC gust (funny how I my love of views on bodies of water always leads me to the windiest place in town; my daughter would say it’s because I am Windy). There are a couple decorations downtown and in shops, Christmas trees on sale, even a menorah on the Vieux Port. Overall it is very low-key, which I appreciate, though I must admit enjoying sneaking a peek on Fifth Avenue near 57th to check out the windows at Bergdorf, looking annoyed at the flocks of stalling tourists while taking in the display from the corner of my eye. What I cannot stand, I now realize clearly, are the “Marché de Noel” type of affairs. They are basically like street fairs in NYC, where you see the same vendors over and over. How many gelatin candles with dried flowers can one person buy? So here it’s pretty much the same thing, except that there are stalls and stalls of santons, which are little figurines depicting villagers and peasants in their usual occupations. I think it started out with the nativity scene, where there were just a couple of people (namely, Mary, Joseph, the three kings, the angel, a coupe animals and finally, on the twenty-fifth, baby Jesus). People got carried away and started making these elaborate nativity scenes with thousands of little guys. All this to say that the center of town is filled with merchants selling these things.

I put up a tiny Christmas tree in my apartment, mostly because my daughter asked for it, and after all it proved to be a fun week end project. I call it the flamenco tree because instead of a star or angel we topped it with a big black satin flower and decorated it with some of my dangling earrings. I like it.