Letters From Paris
Bonne Année
If a package enters Purgatory, will it still be delivered? ROSECRANS BALDWIN recounts the holiday season from France, with notes on the postal system, sexy elves, and Christmas trees hung with giant stilettos.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- First Scary Movies (Of Recent Note)
- Beloved Children's Books (Of Recent Note)
- Superpowers, Revealed (Of Recent Note)
Also by Rosecrans Baldwin
» SEE MORE
- When It Sizzles (June 19, 2008)
- Paris, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down (March 19, 2008)
- Le Coq Sportif (October 17, 2007)
Also in Letters From Paris
» SEE MORE
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Paris doesn’t do a big Christmas. It does something close to Christmas, but not quite. Perhaps Christmas carols and holiday decorations are too kitschy for Parisians. There were a few signs of the season—streets strung with lights, stores open on Sundays. Up in Montmartre, outside an art show about shoes, a tree was decorated with giant wooden stilettos. But Christmas snuck up on me and my wife this year; there was none of December’s sense of anticipation. On street corners downtown you could buy a cornet of roasted chestnuts for two euros—but you can always buy roasted chestnuts on the streets in Paris, it seems.
Paris did have more carousels than usual, though: big double-decker wheels all lit up. At Hotel de Ville, Paris’s town hall since the fourteenth century, the city erected an open-air ice skating rink, drawing thousands. We passed it at dusk, on our Christmas Eve walk down to the Seine, and the line to rent skates circled around the block. Next door was a small sledding hill built for children—that traditional French pastime of sledding down a wheelchair ramp.
We crossed the river and walked to Notre Dame to see the tree. It’s smaller than Rockefeller Center’s, modestly decorated, but it’s also more approachable. The square in front of the cathedral was thronged with tourists, more of them spilling out of tour buses: mothers and daughters in matching holiday outfits; men wearing sweaters with reindeer flying across their bellies.
All our Parisian friends had left the city by that point. Even President Sarkozy spirited off his new girlfriend to see the pyramids in Egypt. As though it were summer again, Paris courted the mobs, its wonders lit up and open late—the monuments, the cafés, the Left Bank T-shirt shops.
My wife and I walked home and opened a bottle of champagne and exchanged gifts: a radio for me, earrings for her. At the post office that morning, they’d promised us that a box of gifts sent from the U.S., which we knew to have arrived in Paris several days earlier, would be available soon, probably on the 26th. It was mainly a matter of paperwork, they said.
* * *
In early December, I asked a colleague at work what I needed to cook for an authentic French Christmas. It’s not about cooking, he said. A seafood platter is the main thing: a monster plate of ice, lemons, and shellfish. Show me to your leader, I said.
The French love seafood during the holidays. Almost every block around Paris featured open-air seafood merchants, men in rubber overalls standing behind crates stocked with ice and shellfish: tiny oysters and humongous ones, sacks of clams, some shrimp the size of grubs, others big as cats. Unlike in the States, the shrimp still had their faces, their small black eyes in place staring back at you—that same cocktail snack, only here you are required to be involved in the beheading.
At our local Monoprix, the upscale supermarket chain, they had special sections devoted to holiday feasts, arranged like displays at a sporting goods store: towers of champagne, piles of oysters, pyramids of foie gras wrapped in gold foil. The beady-eyed shrimp came in four different sizes, and some of the eyeballs were big as marbles. We decided on whole roasted fish for Christmas dinner, two big fresh sea bass from our poissoniere around the corner. We’d already gotten our fill of oysters by that point: on the morning before a cocktail party at our apartment, a friend called, saying we should expect a delivery around eight. When the doorbell rang that evening, it was our poissoniere’s teenage driver with a tray in his hands the size of a knight’s shield. “Monsieur Bald-ween?” he asked, and then solemnly handed over the platter. Thankfully, the mountain was mainly oysters, with only a small pile of shrimp to be guillotined; a bowl of mayonnaise was included, for drowning them afterwards.
* * *
Two weeks before Christmas and six months after we moved to Paris, we received word that our cartes de sejour, our residency cards, were finally available. These cards had required an incredible amount of paperwork, stamps, and toil: meetings, lawyers, forests of photocopies. For all our work, we expected a parade when it was over, or at least one last fight with a vindictive immigration official, to be turned away one final time for missing form X or payment Y. Instead, after 15 minutes inside the prefecture de police, we left through the main gate, cartes de sejour in hand.
Afterwards we celebrated with a drink. It was the middle of the day in the center of the city, on the Ile de la Cité, and we felt great. We’d just been anointed, perhaps not officially French citizens, but something close. We stored our laminated identity cards in my wife’s purse and crossed the Petit Pont to the left bank where we went into the nearest café. Before I’d closed the door, the man inside greeted us loudly in English. “Hello! Today will you be drinking or eating?”
There’s always an air of networking at expat parties, as though we’re all there mainly to make connections for crisis situations.I wanted to show him my new badge. I wanted to explain, in French, about the French test I’d passed; the eight-hour French civics and history class I’d been required to sit through. I wanted to show him the French X-ray I had at home proving I didn’t have tuberculosis. “Just drinks, thanks,” I said in English.
The week of Christmas, we attended a holiday party near the Luxembourg gardens. It was full of expatriates: journalists, English teachers, freelance web designers. There’s always an air of networking at expat parties, I’ve found, as though we’re all there mainly to make connections for crisis situations—do you know a good English-speaking dentist? Do you know any vegan restaurants? Around midnight, we went to another party at a nightclub three floors beneath the Champs-Elysées, in a room of mirrors and red velvet booths and rich French bachelors ogling a six-foot-tall model DJ. The music was terrific; the champagne was free. I sat next to a young British conductor, we discussed absolutely nothing, then my wife and I danced for an hour before climbing back upstairs and coming out onto the street where the line for the club was two people deep, extending down the block. We caught a cab and went home, happy and exhausted.
* * *
A jotting in my notebook: I am always stepping in dog shit, the one Paris cliché that’s actually true. That, and that no one moves out of your way. Shoulder-checked a lady this morning who wouldn’t budge to let me off the Metro. Enjoyed it.
* * *
For Christmas, our family asked us for uniquely French presents. Considering our budget, we thought about H&M, perhaps the Gap. We chose a few bottles of wine. At the post office in early December, they wanted to know exactly what we were shipping. Wine, we said. All right, they said, no problem, just note it on the shipping form.
Two weeks later, an online tracking service said our box was still in France, stuck in a western suburb, apparently the Purgatory of the French mail system. I went into the post office again.
“What happened?”
“You tried to ship wine. It is illegal to ship wine to the United States.”
“But you told us, we could ship wine. We wrote ‘wine’ on the form,” I said.
“Yes, you wrote it clearly, I see. I don’t know why they told you that you could ship wine. I’m sorry.”
“Can we try calling the office where the box is resting?” I said. My fluency in French improves daily, but not quickly.
“I have tried to call them, but they are not answering.”
“Do you have a system on the internet to look at the box?”
“I have tried this also. Our system is down.”
“What else can we do?”
“The recipient could try calling immigration.”
“Immigration? In the United States?”
“Immigration in Europe, for the United States. It is out of our control.”
“But you’re the postal service.”
“I am sorry. I do not know why they said you could mail wine to the United States, it is bizarre.”
“What happens now?”
“They will send the box to the return address you wrote. You will receive it in four to six weeks.”
“I am super angry.”
“I am sorry. Have a good day.”
* * *
For Christmas, I received an espresso machine. Specifically I got a machine that brews Nespresso coffee, and only Nespresso coffee, coffee packed in small foil pods that you can only buy at Nespresso stores, which are called clubs. You cannot just walk into a Nespresso club and buy coffee. Instead, you need to have your membership card, which you must show, and then you must select your “Grand Cru” of coffee from 16 varieties, and only then, after enticing you with the latest seasonal offerings (cardamom espresso; chocolate orange), will a Nespresso club representative sell you coffee.
The quote, “I wouldn’t join any club that would have me,” comes to mind. Except the machine came with a sample pack of 12 espresso pods, and I finished them all the first day.
* * *
The office Christmas tree was real, but not quite. Fifteen feet tall, it had been spray-painted red. Last year it was painted black, I was told. For further realism, an office manager wrapped up empty printer cartridge boxes and stacked them under the tree. One week, a newspaper hired two women in sexy-elf costumes—red bustiers, red miniskirts, black stockings and patent-leather pumps—to stand in our lobby next to the tree and hand out gift guides.
Outside, on the Champs-Elysées, the trees were all strung with purple lights: all pretty purple twinkle, purple neon saline drips.
I was tempted to play carols at work on my computer to get people into the Christmas spirit. But playing music out loud in the office is a delicate art. One day I went out but accidentally left music playing through my speakers—an ambient techno mix intended to offend no one. The boss told me later, “you made the office sound like a sushi restaurant.”
Prior to Christmas, there was advertising up in the subways for a new video game designed for girls. The posters showed a girl training and riding a horse, with the caption, “Your horse. Your friend. Your champion.” During a meeting in a senior partner’s office, I tried explaining in French why I was sure it would be a successful campaign, but my translation was a little off: “Your horse. Your boyfriend. Your mushroom.”
The first day back at work in January, a dozen people in my office gathered ‘round to wish each other happy new year. Then they got down to work: comparing how much foie gras they’d eaten over the break; the quantities and types of foie gras, and over how many meals; how it had been prepared; what it had been accompanied by; what wines were drunk alongside. Then it was time for lunch.
* * *
A few days after Christmas, my sister flew in from New York for a week’s visit. She hadn’t been to Paris since she was 16. On her first day, I whined about ceding my vacation to playing tour guide, but then I started enjoying it—primarily because I enjoy spending time with my sister, and I’ve missed my family, but also because it was fun to play tourist. We roamed the city with the crowds and caught the sights: the Rodin museum, the Pantheon, Ladurée, Montmartre. On New Year’s Eve, we threw a small party at home and watched a French variety show in lieu of Dick Clark, a musical revue complete with a cheesy host and can-can dancers. The Interior Ministry reported the next morning that 144 cars were burned in the Paris suburbs on New Year’s Eve, a smaller amount than last year, a twinkling halo around the city no one saw.
Paris did have more carousels than usual, though: big double-decker wheels all lit up. At Hotel de Ville, Paris’s town hall since the fourteenth century, the city erected an open-air ice skating rink, drawing thousands. We passed it at dusk, on our Christmas Eve walk down to the Seine, and the line to rent skates circled around the block. Next door was a small sledding hill built for children—that traditional French pastime of sledding down a wheelchair ramp.
We crossed the river and walked to Notre Dame to see the tree. It’s smaller than Rockefeller Center’s, modestly decorated, but it’s also more approachable. The square in front of the cathedral was thronged with tourists, more of them spilling out of tour buses: mothers and daughters in matching holiday outfits; men wearing sweaters with reindeer flying across their bellies.
All our Parisian friends had left the city by that point. Even President Sarkozy spirited off his new girlfriend to see the pyramids in Egypt. As though it were summer again, Paris courted the mobs, its wonders lit up and open late—the monuments, the cafés, the Left Bank T-shirt shops.
My wife and I walked home and opened a bottle of champagne and exchanged gifts: a radio for me, earrings for her. At the post office that morning, they’d promised us that a box of gifts sent from the U.S., which we knew to have arrived in Paris several days earlier, would be available soon, probably on the 26th. It was mainly a matter of paperwork, they said.
In early December, I asked a colleague at work what I needed to cook for an authentic French Christmas. It’s not about cooking, he said. A seafood platter is the main thing: a monster plate of ice, lemons, and shellfish. Show me to your leader, I said.
The French love seafood during the holidays. Almost every block around Paris featured open-air seafood merchants, men in rubber overalls standing behind crates stocked with ice and shellfish: tiny oysters and humongous ones, sacks of clams, some shrimp the size of grubs, others big as cats. Unlike in the States, the shrimp still had their faces, their small black eyes in place staring back at you—that same cocktail snack, only here you are required to be involved in the beheading.
At our local Monoprix, the upscale supermarket chain, they had special sections devoted to holiday feasts, arranged like displays at a sporting goods store: towers of champagne, piles of oysters, pyramids of foie gras wrapped in gold foil. The beady-eyed shrimp came in four different sizes, and some of the eyeballs were big as marbles. We decided on whole roasted fish for Christmas dinner, two big fresh sea bass from our poissoniere around the corner. We’d already gotten our fill of oysters by that point: on the morning before a cocktail party at our apartment, a friend called, saying we should expect a delivery around eight. When the doorbell rang that evening, it was our poissoniere’s teenage driver with a tray in his hands the size of a knight’s shield. “Monsieur Bald-ween?” he asked, and then solemnly handed over the platter. Thankfully, the mountain was mainly oysters, with only a small pile of shrimp to be guillotined; a bowl of mayonnaise was included, for drowning them afterwards.
Two weeks before Christmas and six months after we moved to Paris, we received word that our cartes de sejour, our residency cards, were finally available. These cards had required an incredible amount of paperwork, stamps, and toil: meetings, lawyers, forests of photocopies. For all our work, we expected a parade when it was over, or at least one last fight with a vindictive immigration official, to be turned away one final time for missing form X or payment Y. Instead, after 15 minutes inside the prefecture de police, we left through the main gate, cartes de sejour in hand.
Afterwards we celebrated with a drink. It was the middle of the day in the center of the city, on the Ile de la Cité, and we felt great. We’d just been anointed, perhaps not officially French citizens, but something close. We stored our laminated identity cards in my wife’s purse and crossed the Petit Pont to the left bank where we went into the nearest café. Before I’d closed the door, the man inside greeted us loudly in English. “Hello! Today will you be drinking or eating?”
There’s always an air of networking at expat parties, as though we’re all there mainly to make connections for crisis situations.I wanted to show him my new badge. I wanted to explain, in French, about the French test I’d passed; the eight-hour French civics and history class I’d been required to sit through. I wanted to show him the French X-ray I had at home proving I didn’t have tuberculosis. “Just drinks, thanks,” I said in English.
The week of Christmas, we attended a holiday party near the Luxembourg gardens. It was full of expatriates: journalists, English teachers, freelance web designers. There’s always an air of networking at expat parties, I’ve found, as though we’re all there mainly to make connections for crisis situations—do you know a good English-speaking dentist? Do you know any vegan restaurants? Around midnight, we went to another party at a nightclub three floors beneath the Champs-Elysées, in a room of mirrors and red velvet booths and rich French bachelors ogling a six-foot-tall model DJ. The music was terrific; the champagne was free. I sat next to a young British conductor, we discussed absolutely nothing, then my wife and I danced for an hour before climbing back upstairs and coming out onto the street where the line for the club was two people deep, extending down the block. We caught a cab and went home, happy and exhausted.
A jotting in my notebook: I am always stepping in dog shit, the one Paris cliché that’s actually true. That, and that no one moves out of your way. Shoulder-checked a lady this morning who wouldn’t budge to let me off the Metro. Enjoyed it.
For Christmas, our family asked us for uniquely French presents. Considering our budget, we thought about H&M, perhaps the Gap. We chose a few bottles of wine. At the post office in early December, they wanted to know exactly what we were shipping. Wine, we said. All right, they said, no problem, just note it on the shipping form.
Two weeks later, an online tracking service said our box was still in France, stuck in a western suburb, apparently the Purgatory of the French mail system. I went into the post office again.
“What happened?”
“You tried to ship wine. It is illegal to ship wine to the United States.”
“But you told us, we could ship wine. We wrote ‘wine’ on the form,” I said.
“Yes, you wrote it clearly, I see. I don’t know why they told you that you could ship wine. I’m sorry.”
“Can we try calling the office where the box is resting?” I said. My fluency in French improves daily, but not quickly.
“I have tried to call them, but they are not answering.”
“Do you have a system on the internet to look at the box?”
“I have tried this also. Our system is down.”
“What else can we do?”
“The recipient could try calling immigration.”
“Immigration? In the United States?”
“Immigration in Europe, for the United States. It is out of our control.”
“But you’re the postal service.”
“I am sorry. I do not know why they said you could mail wine to the United States, it is bizarre.”
“What happens now?”
“They will send the box to the return address you wrote. You will receive it in four to six weeks.”
“I am super angry.”
“I am sorry. Have a good day.”
For Christmas, I received an espresso machine. Specifically I got a machine that brews Nespresso coffee, and only Nespresso coffee, coffee packed in small foil pods that you can only buy at Nespresso stores, which are called clubs. You cannot just walk into a Nespresso club and buy coffee. Instead, you need to have your membership card, which you must show, and then you must select your “Grand Cru” of coffee from 16 varieties, and only then, after enticing you with the latest seasonal offerings (cardamom espresso; chocolate orange), will a Nespresso club representative sell you coffee.
The quote, “I wouldn’t join any club that would have me,” comes to mind. Except the machine came with a sample pack of 12 espresso pods, and I finished them all the first day.
The office Christmas tree was real, but not quite. Fifteen feet tall, it had been spray-painted red. Last year it was painted black, I was told. For further realism, an office manager wrapped up empty printer cartridge boxes and stacked them under the tree. One week, a newspaper hired two women in sexy-elf costumes—red bustiers, red miniskirts, black stockings and patent-leather pumps—to stand in our lobby next to the tree and hand out gift guides.
Outside, on the Champs-Elysées, the trees were all strung with purple lights: all pretty purple twinkle, purple neon saline drips.
I was tempted to play carols at work on my computer to get people into the Christmas spirit. But playing music out loud in the office is a delicate art. One day I went out but accidentally left music playing through my speakers—an ambient techno mix intended to offend no one. The boss told me later, “you made the office sound like a sushi restaurant.”
Prior to Christmas, there was advertising up in the subways for a new video game designed for girls. The posters showed a girl training and riding a horse, with the caption, “Your horse. Your friend. Your champion.” During a meeting in a senior partner’s office, I tried explaining in French why I was sure it would be a successful campaign, but my translation was a little off: “Your horse. Your boyfriend. Your mushroom.”
The first day back at work in January, a dozen people in my office gathered ‘round to wish each other happy new year. Then they got down to work: comparing how much foie gras they’d eaten over the break; the quantities and types of foie gras, and over how many meals; how it had been prepared; what it had been accompanied by; what wines were drunk alongside. Then it was time for lunch.
A few days after Christmas, my sister flew in from New York for a week’s visit. She hadn’t been to Paris since she was 16. On her first day, I whined about ceding my vacation to playing tour guide, but then I started enjoying it—primarily because I enjoy spending time with my sister, and I’ve missed my family, but also because it was fun to play tourist. We roamed the city with the crowds and caught the sights: the Rodin museum, the Pantheon, Ladurée, Montmartre. On New Year’s Eve, we threw a small party at home and watched a French variety show in lieu of Dick Clark, a musical revue complete with a cheesy host and can-can dancers. The Interior Ministry reported the next morning that 144 cars were burned in the Paris suburbs on New Year’s Eve, a smaller amount than last year, a twinkling halo around the city no one saw.
—Published January 10, 2008
