Saint Sylvestre

Every day in France has a Saint that is associated with it and on that day if it’s your Saint’s Day you have essentially a birthday party. But I haven’t really been able to figure out how it works. How do you know who your Saint is? Is it based on your name? So that if there is a Saint Sarah I would have a party on that day? Or is it based on your birthday? So if I was born on Saint Michelle’s day for example I would celebrate each St. Michelle’s day after that? Anyways, I’ve had difficulty getting and finding answers to this puzzle of Saint’s Days. Maybe someone out there knows more than me. I just find it interesting that it’s part of the weather forecast that comes on right before and right after the news. They always tell you which Saint’s Day it is tomorrow and they wish them “Bonnes fêtes” or “Good parties/celebrations”. It’s also marked on just about every calendar I’ve seen.

Well, all of this cultural cultural discussion is brought on because the 31st of December is Saint Sylvestre’s Day. Thus, the title of this post. And on Saint Sylvestre the French have a celebration known as a réveillon (pronounced: ray-vey-on). Our church here decided to have one for the first time in a few years and Shawn and I were very glad they did! We had such a great time! But before I get ahead of myself.

Some Saint Sylvestre réveillon parties are costume parties where people dress up in funny or silly costumes. At our party there were lots of Pirates, a few medieval Princesses, one Indiana Jones, one Pharaoh, one clown, and three cowboys. I bet you can guess what we were dressed up as! …….Pirates! No, just kidding. We went as a cowboy and cowgirl because we wouldn’t have to buy much to make a believable costume. However, since Shawn had a hat and I didn’t, some thought I didn’t have a costume   boo. I thought that intentionally wearing my cowgirl boots on the outside of my jeans and tucking my shirt in was a pretty decent attempt. I guess they thought that that was just a new fashion or something, which to give them credit, boots on the outside of jeans is a pretty big fashion trend.

This réveillon party was also a pot luck and Shawn and I agreed to bring “une entrée” which is not an entrée for all you Anglophones (English-speakers). When this happens and what seems like a cognate is not actually a cognate we call it a “faux ami” or a “false friend” because it tricks you! “Une entrée” in French is actually an appetizer. But here’s where I get nervous. Because there’s also an apèritif planned where you have “amuse-geules” or “amuse-bouches” which is like finger-foods or hors d’oeuvres. But I think in America the line between the two is a little fuzzy. Or at least it is for me. So on Thursday afternoon I hunted around the Francophone (French-speaking) Internet for ideas. Armed with our ideas and our grocery bags (because in France most major grocery stores do not have bags at all. You either have to bring your own bag or buy them there. The difference between these bags and the reusable grocery bags in the States is that these bags are enormous! They could probably hold 3 times the amount of groceries as one of the reusable bags in the States. But I always had difficulty remembering to bring my reusable bags in the States but not here because there’s no other option. If you don’t have a bag you either have to figure out how to carry it all without a bag or you have to pay about 1 euro to buy each bag! That helps to create a habit pretty quickly!) Anyways, slight tangent there, sorry about that. So, armed with our ideas and our grocery bags, we got on a bus to go to a “grand surface” which is a really big grocery store. Think about a HEB plus if you live in Texas. If you don’t live in Texas, I don’t know what the equivalent is, sorry. We spend probably an hour wandering around the store getting all the stuff we need. But we had some excellent finds! There are several international food sections in the store and we actually found two separate brands of peanut butter! We had to pay 3 euros for what would be in the States a small jar but we saved about 2 euros by not buying the even smaller jar of Skippy brand! We were also happy to find a very small bag of nacho chips and jars of salsa. We decided to add these to our appetizer since we’re the official Texans anyways!

We rushed home, we had about an hour to get everything together at this point. But there was one small problem, neither of us had eaten lunch and we were starving! Not wanting to seem like stereotypical Americans who just eat and eat and eat and eat, we decided that we should eat something before we went to the party that started at 8. So, we put a pizza in the oven while we were working on our appetizer.

So for this appetizer we took a roll of pre-made tarte dough and cut it into strips. We then wrapped the dough around some saucisson (hard sausage) and raclette cheese. We put half of a cherry tomato on top, put the whole thing on a tooth pick and put them all in the oven.

Shawn beginning the assembly.

little tasties ready to go into the oven!

So while those were baking we scarfed down the pizza, got our reusable grocery bag ready for another trip to carry all the stuff to church, and got our costumes on. Once at the church building we assembled the little toothpick things as well as some little pickles on toothpicks onto yesterday’s baguette that we got for 20 centimes (cents) at our boulangerie (bakery). We put the chips on a plate along with the jar of salsa. Here’s the finished product.

Voilà!

While everyone was arriving and setting up their dishes, etc. We played the game where you have a name on your back and you can only ask yes or no questions to figure out whose name you have on your back. For our first round Shawn was Tiger Woods and I was Sigourney Weaver. He found out his legitimately but I overheard someone say Aliens, which I’ve never seen but I knew she was in it. Then Shawn had Jean Claude Van Dame which I don’t think he ever got and I found out my second one, Cleopatra, because a little girl at the church told me to ask if I was Egyptian. So neither of mine was ever actually found out. But I felt bad because for just about everyone else’s I had no idea who they were! I think the idea was to mingle but Shawn and I didn’t do a very good job of it.

Mingle-ing. Examples of other costumes.

The apèritif was opened and we had a sweet white wine with foie gras which was amazingly delicious spread on a kind of spice/fruit bread. As the foie gras disappeared, people started to dip into our chips and salsa and our toothpick tasties. By the time we sat down for the appetizers, there were barely any toothpick tasties left! Yay! Success! It worked out okay because several other people had brought appetizers like beets, or  shredded carrots with hardboiled eggs and tomato slices, or smoked salmon, or these delicious little cups with salmon on the bottom and a really tasty cream dip-like sauce on top! Then we listened to some jokes, only one of which I didn’t really understand. Oh and I shared a blonde joke, the one about the bag of potatoes and they all laughed and then expressed their surprise that we even have blonde jokes in America since there are so many.

At dinner. You can kind of tell I tried to poof-up my hair. Taken on a friend's iPhone.

Then it was time for the main course. There was turkey and couscous and rice with raisins and almond slices and some curry chicken and lots of green beans and au gratin potatoes. I got a little bit of just about everything but had a really hard time eating it all by that point. I think by this time it was about 10 or 10:30pm. Oh, and in-between courses we changed seats which I thought was nice, livened up the conversation a little.

Then we went downstairs for some games. First we played a kind of charades game where you had to find the correct description of an action. For example, you had to get your teammates to guess “shampooing your hair” and “washing your hair” wouldn’t count. I was of course, pretty much useless at this game. Then we played a rabbit vs. hunter game which was a basic elimination game that was fun and interesting. Then Shawn and I taught everyone “King Frog” that we learned on a Westover Young Marrieds camping trip about two years ago. It was a little difficult at first, especially because several people didn’t understand that the point of the game was to be paying attention the whole time! So we had to stop quite a bit and shuffle chairs. I think we ended up playing it for like 30 minutes. We were all laughing our heads off and most people seemed to enjoy it. I even heard some ladies talking about it later saying: “It was a really nice game wasn’t it?” “Oh yes, lots of fun. They’re really good at it. It is a little difficult though”.

Cheese course. I actually didn’t have any. I know, I’m shocked too. It’s just that there weren’t any really good cheeses and I was still stuffed from the main course and I wanted to save some room for dessert. So we sat around and talked for awhile. I can’t remember if we started dancing before or after midnight but either way it started and then was kind of an off and on activity for the rest of the night. The first one I danced to was “Cotton Eyed Joe” which they don’t know the actual dance to but they were having fun anyways. Then just some basic dance/celebration music. We showed off our “lawnmower”, “sprinkler”, “fishing” and “shopping” moves but they all seemed to be confused.

Some of the French-English bilingual kids from church.

Then it was time for the countdown, followed immediately by real champagne and everyone had to go around the room and wish everyone else a Happy New Year “Bonne Année” while doing the cheek kissy thing. I found out later that this is one of the rare occasions that men, who usually shake hands when greeting each other, will do the cheek kissy thing too. Apparently many of the men at the party apologized to Shawn saying “I’m sorry, I have to kiss you now.” HAHAHA!

Right after the countdown. Making the rounds of New Years wishes.

Then it was time for more celebratory dancing downstairs where we educated everyone on the proper way to dance The Macarena! It has been SO LONG since I’ve heard that song! I can’t believe I still know some of the words!

boogie down!

Then of course, what New Year’s party would be complete without a little friendly sword fight?

ARRRRRRR MATEYS!

Everyone helped with the massive clean up involved when 25 people have a dinner together. It was at about 2 am that Shawn started to not feel so good for some reason or another so we helped clean up and then graciously accepted and offer of a ride home! Several families stayed at the church for probably another hour or so to play a board game. We came home and called the family to wish them a Happy New Year from the future.

We hope that everyone had a very enjoyable and safe New Year’s Eve and we wish you all the best and blessings for the year to come!