Christmas in France

How the French celebrate Christmas

The French Christmas season opens with Advent. Wreaths with four candles are lit on the four Sundays before Christmas, and Advent calendars count down the days. Towns put up lights in late November, and Christmas markets open, above all in Alsace. Families set up a crèche (nativity scene), which in Provence is filled with small painted clay figures called santons, and buy a fir tree, a custom that spread across France from Alsace in the 19th century.

France is a secular state, and Christmas is celebrated by believers and non-believers alike as a family holiday. Only 25 December is a public holiday in most of the country, so Christmas Eve is a working day for many, which makes the evening meal the great moment of the season. Celebrations continue through the Saint-Sylvestre réveillon on New Year's Eve and end with Epiphany in January.

The réveillon and midnight Mass

The réveillon de Noël, from réveiller (to wake), is the Christmas Eve dinner, and it is the most important meal of the French Christmas. It starts late and lasts for hours. A classic menu opens with champagne, oysters, foie gras, smoked salmon or scallops, continues with a capon or turkey stuffed with chestnuts, then cheese, and ends with the bûche de Noël, a log-shaped cake that recalls the old Yule log once burned in the hearth.

Many families go to midnight Mass (la messe de minuit) before or after the meal; many parishes now hold it earlier in the evening. In Paris, Notre-Dame celebrated its first midnight Mass since the 2019 fire on 24 December 2024, after the cathedral reopened that month. Christmas Day itself is quieter: a long family lunch, often of leftovers, and time with relatives.

Père Noël and his letters

Père Noël (Father Christmas) arrives on the night of 24 December. Shoes were traditionally left by the fireplace for him to fill; today presents are placed under the tree and opened either after the réveillon or on Christmas morning. In Alsace, Lorraine and the north, Saint Nicolas comes first, on 6 December, with sweets and gingerbread, accompanied by his dark companion Père Fouettard.

Since 1962, La Poste has run the Secrétariat du Père Noël in Libourne, near Bordeaux, which answers more than a million letters every year. Letters need no stamp, and the first standard reply was written by the psychoanalyst Françoise Dolto. To receive an answer before Christmas, letters must be posted by mid-December (the 2025 deadline was 20 December).

Christmas traditions in every region of France

Alsace: the cradle of the Christmas tree

Alsace calls itself the "Capitale de Noël". Strasbourg's Christkindelsmärik has been held since 1570, making it the oldest Christmas market in France, and its giant tree stands on Place Kléber. Nearby Sélestat holds what it presents as the oldest written record of a Christmas tree: an entry in the town accounts of 21 December 1521 paying forest guards to watch over the fir trees on Saint Thomas's day. Alsatian homes bake dozens of kinds of bredele biscuits, and Colmar, Kaysersberg, Riquewihr and Mulhouse all have their own markets. Because of Alsace's local law, 26 December, Saint Stephen's Day, is a public holiday here.

Lorraine and the north: Saint Nicolas

Saint Nicolas is the patron saint of Lorraine, and his feast on 6 December rivals Christmas. Nancy holds France's largest Saint Nicolas celebrations, with a grand parade to Place Stanislas; in 2026 it is on Saturday, 5 December. The saint, in a bishop's mitre and with his donkey, brings gingerbread and sweets to the well behaved, while Père Fouettard is said to deal with the rest. Saint Nicolas is also celebrated in the Nord, and Lille, Amiens and Reims host large Christmas markets.

Paris

Paris dresses up from late November. The Champs-Élysées are lined with lights, the big department stores on Boulevard Haussmann compete with animated window displays and giant trees under their domes, and Christmas markets and ice rinks open around the city. On Christmas Eve, the reopened Notre-Dame and the city's other churches hold midnight Masses.

Lyon: the Festival of Lights

Every year around 8 December, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, Lyon holds the Fête des Lumières. It began on 8 December 1852, when a gilded statue of the Virgin was unveiled on the Fourvière chapel and the people of Lyon spontaneously lit their windows. Residents still put candles in coloured glasses on their windowsills, and the city now stages light shows on its monuments over several nights, drawing visitors from around the world.

Provence: santons and the 13 desserts

Provence has France's richest Christmas rituals. On 4 December, Saint Barbara's day, wheat is sown in three saucers; if it grows green and thick by Christmas, the coming year will be good. Families build a crèche filled with santons, clay figures of the Holy Family surrounded by villagers of old Provence: the baker, the fishwife, the shepherd and the knife-grinder. Marseille's Foire aux santons, held every year since 1803, is where many collectors buy them.

On Christmas Eve the family shares the gros souper, a meatless "great supper" of seven dishes, such as cod, snails and vegetables, on a table laid with three white tablecloths and three candles. Before the meal, the youngest and oldest of the family may perform the cacho-fio, blessing a log of fruit wood with mulled wine before it is set on the fire. After midnight Mass come the treize desserts, thirteen sweets that stand for Christ and the twelve apostles: the olive-oil pompe à l'huile, the four mendiants (dried figs, raisins, almonds and walnuts), white and black nougat, dates, calissons, quince paste and fresh fruit. In January, villages stage pastorales, Nativity plays in Provençal, and the crèche stays up until Candlemas on 2 February.

The Alps, the Pyrenees and the Basque Country

In ski resorts in the Alps and Pyrenees, the holidays are often marked by a descente aux flambeaux, a torchlight descent in which ski instructors come down the slopes in the dark carrying flares, usually on Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve. Olentzero, the charcoal-burner of Basque folklore who brings presents on Christmas Eve in the Spanish Basque Country, has also become a Christmas figure in the French Basque Country.

Overseas France

In Martinique and Guadeloupe, the weeks of Advent are the season of chanté Nwel: neighbours gather in homes and community halls to sing French and Creole Christmas carols, with punch and schrubb, an orange-peel rum liqueur. In Réunion, in the Indian Ocean, Christmas falls in summer: the réveillon may be a cari (curry) with rice and rougail, followed by fresh lychees and mangoes, alongside the bûche de Noël.

The best Christmas markets in France

French Christmas markets, the marchés de Noël, sell wooden toys, ornaments, crèche figures, gingerbread and mulled wine (vin chaud) from wooden chalets. The tradition is strongest in Alsace and Lorraine, which share it with Germany.

• Strasbourg: the Christkindelsmärik, France's oldest market (since 1570), spread across the old town; usually late November to 24 December.
• Colmar, Kaysersberg and Riquewihr: half-timbered Alsatian towns with several small markets each.
• Lille, Amiens and Reims: the largest markets in northern France.
• Metz and Nancy: markets linked to the Saint Nicolas celebrations.
• Paris: markets in several districts, alongside ice rinks and illuminated avenues.
• Marseille: the Foire aux santons on the Vieux-Port, from mid-November to early January.

Traditional French Christmas food

Epiphany and the galette des rois

The French Christmas season ends with Épiphanie, the arrival of the Three Kings. In France it is kept on the Sunday between 2 and 8 January, which in 2027 is Sunday, 3 January, though galettes des rois are sold and shared all through January. In most of France the galette is a puff-pastry tart filled with frangipane; in Provence and the south it is the gâteau des rois, a brioche crown with candied fruit. A small charm, the fève, is baked inside. The youngest person at the table hides under it and calls out who gets each slice, and whoever finds the fève wears the paper crown.

French Christmas season dates 2026

Christmas in France: frequently asked questions

Christmas in nearby countries