Bonne Année ! But Not Until Midnight

Kim held up the little black bolero jacket, white blouse, and brocade pants she’d brought to France especially for tonight’s New Year’s Eve party.

What do you think?”

I’d already told her about a dozen times that it was the perfect outfit, but that was back home in Maine. Now that we were in France, she wanted to make sure they hadn’t changed somehow while they were in her suitcase.

And then she looked at me.

You’re not wearing those jeans, are you?”

They were new, my best Levis actually.

I only wear these on special occasions.” Kim wasn’t listening as she pulled out a pair of my khakis and the only dress shirt I own.

Twenty minutes later, we were both properly attired, overdressed in my case because she also made me wear a tie. At the bottom of our spiral staircase, Kim took one more look in the full-length mirror and then we locked up the 700-year-old house we’d recently bought, scraping together all our savings to do so. “It’s time to celebrate,” said Kim, taking my arm, and off we went to experience New Year’s Eve and a new beginning in the south of France.

Patrick and Jocelyne

In general, we’re not party people, but our good friends, Patrick and Jocelyne, had urged us to go with them to the local Le Réveillon de la Saint-Sylvestre. They thought it would be a good way for us to learn more about France and meet some people from the village. Not that we could say much to anyone, not yet anyway.

A week before the event, I emailed Jocelyne to ask why they didn’t call it New Year’s Eve like everyone else. “Saint Sylvestre was the 33rd Pope of the Catholic Church,” Jocelyne had written back. She loves little details like that, though neither she nor Patrick has ever set foot in a church. But they do believe in knowing one’s history, like the year 1905 when the concept of laïcité, the legal separation of the church from the state, became the law. “It’s a French word that is not easily translated,” added Jocelyne, justly proud of this French exception. She finally got around to my question about why it’s not just called New Year’s Eve. “Of course, Pope Sylvestre died on December 31, in the year 335.”

And that was that. No more questions.

It was getting dark as I maneuvered our old Renault Twingo down the narrow, steep lane that led to the bottom of the village. We were headed to the Magnanerie, the renovated silkworm factory in Seillans. Silk production was once a booming industry here. It took 2,500 silkworms to produce just one pound of raw silk. The vast space that once housed them is now a chic gallery and banquet hall.

Patrick was there to meet us as we parked the Renault. He took one look at my face and offered this advice: “Remain calm, brother, no matter what.”

I’ve known Patrick since the late 1970s, when we both worked for a company based in Minneapolis. Patrick would come to the home office once or twice each year for training sessions and sales meetings. He was tall, dark, handsome, young, French, and very enthusiastic. Everyone loved him. After 45 years, we are now presque frères, almost brothers.

He was born and raised inside the old Parisian flea market, Marché aux Puces St-Ouen de Clignancourt. His grandmother sold moules frites from a cart outside their home.

Little Patrick, tied to the cart to keep him from wandering off, charmed the dealers and vendors who enjoyed bringing him old toys, stamps, records, and postcards. He still has most of it stashed in boxes in his garage, next to his classic black 1949 Citroën traction. Patrick and Jocelyne never dated. They met for the first time at a party that Patrick crashed.

He took one look at Jocelyne and that was that.

Over the following years, they would always invite me to Paris, but I always found some excuse: Too busy. Too far. Too expensive. Most of all, my ex-wife didn’t really want to go to France: “I don’t speak that language!”

Eventually, the invitations stopped.

And then my life changed. I got divorced, left the bitter cold winters in the Midwest, and moved to Boston, where I set up my own company. I found Kim one day in Marblehead, just north of Boston, in a wonderful old shop packed with rare and used books. I think it was in the nonfiction aisle, but Kim insists I was perusing the self-help volumes. We fell in love, got engaged in Maine, her home state, and I sent the good news to Patrick and Jocelyne.

Not long after we were married, they sent a letter addressed to Kim inviting us to come and visit. They had not been able to come to our wedding, and now they wanted to meet the bride.

“You have good friends in Paris?” Kim had that look in her eyes.

I’ll admit that we hadn’t had much of a honeymoon; I was too busy with work at the time. We drove around Maine for two days, passing through little towns with names like Norway, Denmark, Belfast, Poland, Mexico, Peru, and Sweden. We stopped for gas in what we thought was Rome, but the lady at the counter told us we’d passed Rome a couple of miles back. “There’s not much in Rome these days,” she had admitted. How many dead popes must’ve rolled over in their graves at that?

Still, it was great fun when folks asked where we’d gone on our honeymoon. But Kim, being a real Mainer, had heard all those jokes before, like how in Maine, Paris was only a mile from Norway. She was more interested now in going to the real place, Paris, France.

And so, we made the trip. And then we made several more. When Patrick and Jocelyne moved from Paris to their new home in the south of France a few years ago, we followed them there.

Patrick has never stopped nagging me to work less and spend more time enjoying life, repeating the old saw, “We must work to live, not live to work.” And he was certain we would enjoy life more in France.

He was right. When the opportunity to live in the south of France gave us the chance to escape the long, wet winters in Maine, we jumped. Our move across the ocean was more of a meteorological decision. Understanding the other reasons, the raisons d’etre, would come later.

“On y va!” said Patrick and Jocelyne, and we followed them into the huge dining hall of the Magnanerie. Inside, twinkle lights sparkled on the medieval timbers, and mellow stone walls hung with mistletoe, pine boughs, and ornaments. It was the perfect place to make merry on an evening named in honor of a Pope who’d died around two thousand years ago.

Workers at the old Magnanerie examine the quality of the silk thread

The Magnanerie today in Seillans

Kim waltzed right in ahead of me, elegant and nonchalant as the French might say. But I got a few looks because I was the only one there not wearing black.

“Well, it could have been worst,” Patrick said in his broken English. “You normally wear jeans and a hoodie.”

“Yes, but it’s always a black hoodie,” I added in defense.

The great hall decorated for the holidays

As we followed Patrick to our table, it looked like we were the only étrangers at the party, and for sure the only Americans. There were 10 – 12 people at each table, which left little room for all the glasses, plates, silverware, and decorations. I’m usually OK with table etiquette, but it was a bit overwhelming. Jocelyne leaned over to add this advice: “Just watch what everyone else is doing.” That worked at first, until later in the evening when folks had had a bit too much champagne.

Dinner began with a beautiful amuse bouche, a little offering that gave us all a preview of the culinary delights that lay ahead. Patrick had previously emailed Eric, the host/chef, to let him know that I was allergic to Coquilles Saint-Jacques, the first course. When our table was being served, in place of the scallops, Eric accommodated us with his velvety homemade foie gras, which he personally served to us.

It was delicious, and when everyone learned that Eric had made it himself, they all wanted a taste. Around the table it went, the slab getting smaller and smaller during the discussion on the qualities of foie gras and the worry that it may one day disappear.

The second course was a Vol au Vent, which we translated much too quickly as Flight of Wind, laughing that it would likely cause gas as the evening progressed. Jocelyne tried to describe the dish for us. As she pointed to her throat, I thought she said that it was veal thyroid glands in a mushroom truffle sauce. It wasn’t. She just didn’t know how to say throat in English, and she wasn’t much better with the word thyroid. The French cannot pronounce the th sound. Patrick jumped in to explain that it’s a puff pastry shell, with layers of pastry and butter baked in the shape of a throat, a tote as he called it. By now, all eyes were on us to see if we would eat and enjoy this delicacy. Thankfully, veal thyroid, or whatever it was, tasted a lot like chicken. There was a bottle of ketchup on the table, but we didn’t touch it.

As the white wine from Val d’Iris was passed around, a second course was brought to the table. Not as flaky on the outside, it looked more like a chicken pot pie in the shape of a rooster, and it glared at us from the plate with one eye, its head cocked to the side.

Roosters are highly respected in France, like cows in India.

And it tasted great. The rooster pie was followed by a ten-year-old Calvados mixed with a tasty, and tart green apple sorbet. At that point, I thought the meal was finally over, but the Calvados was only meant to clear our palates for the vast array of cheeses, a delicious red wine, also from Val d’Iris, and superb crunchy bread now put in front of us. As the red wine went round the table, I noticed two things: One, the locals seated at our table, and many others, were countering their intake of alcohol with a glass of water after each glass of wine. Two, there were a lot of people going up and down the stairs to les toilettes.

When the enjoyment of fine cheeses was over, and the large board they arrived on was bare, beautiful pale-blue oblong plates with six petite and unique dessert samples, and a cup of espresso, were served. A café gourmand, Patrick called it. I love sweets and, after digging in, well, this was my idea of a religious experience. Kim is not a fan of desserts or sweets, so I got most of her gourmand and a few more bits from around the table.

And then the music began.

“Lesson number two,” said Patrick, leaning over so I could hear him above the din. “We French love to dance.”

But before he could launch into a long discussion on the topic, Jocelyne pulled him up onto the dance floor. Kim bet me 100 euros that the DJ would play the Macarena before midnight. I said no way, this was a much classier event. She won. The YMCA was next, of course, followed by a long playlist of similar songs that kept everyone hopping or line dancing. And then, just before midnight, the countdown started. For some reason, they started at the number 12 and not at 10. It certainly had nothing to do with the metric system. I wanted to ask Patrick about it, but, like everyone else, he was focused on the countdown.

11:59 pm in Seillans on that fateful New Year’s Eve

As the group shouted out Bonne Année at the stroke of midnight, I wondered why we didn’t start singing, “Auld Lang Syne”.

This time, I had to ask Patrick. He said that in France, there is often a wariness of anything that is a little too British. So, instead of singing that old familiar tune, our French revelers just batted the balloons that dropped from the ceiling as they went around the hall, from table to table, kissing each other on both cheeks while saying Bonne Année over and over. With a roomful of very happy, tipsy French people, it was more like an unorganized version of musical chairs, and it took at least half an hour to get through it. And then everyone was up dancing again. This time, line dancing and singing along in English to the Amy Winehouse song, “Rehab”. They loved the part that went, “But I said, no, no, no!”

Around 2:00 AM, Kim noticed that, while my eyes were still open, I was not responding to her suggestion that we should dance together at least once. Two cups of espresso brought me back to life, and I got up for one slow dance. Kim led.

At 3:00 AM, everyone started kissing again. It was time to call it a year in Seillans, and kissing is what you do as everyone finally says bonne nuit. And that took another half hour out in the parking lot.

Lesson number three I learned the hard way: After an all-night party, it’s impossible to remember little details like whether we had walked or driven. And then Kim spotted our Twingo, tucked between the rear bumper of a huge SUV and a stone wall.

“Looks like we’re between a rock and a hard place,” said Kim. I had no idea where this burst of humor was coming from, but I had to agree. And, as it was a nice night, we decided to walk home, making our way up the 20% incline of the old cobblestone lane called the Grand Rue, sidestepping the dollops of dog and cat poo.

We got home and into bed at 4:00 AM, and I fell asleep thinking that our first French soirée had been a big success. We woke up a few hours later when the trusty bells in the church tower rang out. Kim was anxious to tell me all about her strange dream (this happens most mornings). In her dream, she was speaking fluently with several French people at the party and then telling them a story that made everyone laugh hysterically.

“Isn’t that amazing?” said Kim, feeling proud. I just nodded. It was a nice dream.

Oh, last lesson learned: You never, ever, say Happy New Year in France until the stroke of midnight. It’s logical if you think about it long enough.

A simpler meal with Jocelyne and Patrick at our home in Seillans

External Links:

Silk production
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sericulture
https://www.etymologie-occitane.fr/2011/09/magnan-magnanerie/

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Introducing Contributor, Mark Jespersen

Immerse yourself in all of Mark’s articles on his Contributor page.

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