CHRISTMAS EVE IN PARIS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 14, 14 December 1932, Page 13

CHRISTMAS EVE IN PARIS

At Yuletide Paris would bo gay though the crack of doom were certain on the morrow. Throughout the whole city on Christmas Eve every hotel is converted into a wonderland with flowers and decorations and giant Christmas trees ablaze with lights. They are packed with the rank and fashion and beauty of the capital dining and supping to the chink of glasses, the strains of music, and the sounds of merry laughter; and thousands of feet trip lightly into the hours that herald the dawn of another day. In the streets great crowds surge up and down the boulevards, frolicking, laughing, and producing weird sounds from strange instruments. Theatres and music halls aro full to the doors with hilarious crowds in the highest good humour, looking forward to the “reveillon”—the midnight revel which is to crown the most jovial night of all the year. Towards midnight the crowds, in boisterous spirits, pour from theatre and music hall and street into'the restaurants and taverns to enjoy the Christmas Eve supper, the climax of the day’s gaieties. Ladies and demi-mondaines, rich dames of the bourgeoisie, and smart shop girls; men of title and concierges sit down and eat together in unrestrained camaraderie. Oysters and “foie gras” and quails in aspic take the place of turkey and plum pudding, and port wine gives way to champagne. But the great dish with high and low alike is a black sausage—the familiar pigs’ pudding of our provincial people at Home. Now gaiety reaches its zenith. Wine sparkles, beer foams, the air is full of shouts of laughter and merry jests. Toasts and songs and speeches follow in bewildering succession, until, presto 1 the scene' is changed. Tables, silver, glass, and linen vanish as if by magic. The band strikes up a merry dancetune and feet trip gaily until morning dawns.