Christmas around the world is a time of mystic rites, and Christmas in Old Auvergne was no different, especially in the snowy and out-of-the-way Sleepy Hollows of Cantal, Haute-Loire and Puy-de-Dôme. Day-to-day life in the Auvergne highlands was a patchwork of colourful experiences that many today would describe as extraordinary. Hungry wolves terrorised towns, dracs (shapeshifting imps) were believed to bother livestock, and meiges (local healers) worked wondrous cures.
At Christmastime, however, Auvergne really turned topsy turvy, transforming — like Bethlehem during the Nativity saga — into a land of miracles. In their homes, elderly raconteurs, like the troubadours of the Middle Ages, spoke spiritedly in Occitan singsong. And while glowing coals crackled underneath the bûche de Noël (the Yule log), entities from invisible realms hovered around the hearth, joining — if only for a short while — the world of the living.
Although most of these traditions and beliefs have faded from popular memory, the following list offers a vivid glimpse into the Auvergne of Christmases past.
Animals were supposed to speak at midnight
Christmas Eve truly was a kind of Twilight Zone in Auvergne, and one popular superstition — attested in Puy-de-Dôme — was that animals acquired the power to speak as soon as the clock struck midnight. It appears, however, that they had no interest in small talk. Instead they used their witching hour power to forecast the deaths of their owners.
“Druidic stones” — dolmens and menhirs — started spinning in circles
Auvergne has over thirty dolmens and menhirs, all of which are thousands of years old. These smaller-sized Stonehenges captivated the imagination of Auvergne’s early inhabitants, who associated them with fadas (fairies) and other magical beings. Notably, the famed linguist and poet Frédéric Mistral wrote that in Velay (a historic region comprising parts of modern-day Haute-Loire), pierres druidiques — as they were oftentimes called — were thought to come alive on Christmas eve, turning like magical spinning tops in the crisp winter air.
The customary Christmas Eve meal was cheese soup
Before leaving for Midnight Mass, many families gathered for a communal meal of soupe au fromage (cheese soup). This dish, said the historian, Jean-Baptiste de Ribier du Châtelet, was a “universal custom” in Cantal. According to a description appearing in the Belle Epoque-era newspaper Le Petit Libéral de Cusset-Vichy, the soup was a sticky melange of bread, onion broth, and Saint-Nectaire or Fourme cheese that took up to forty minutes to cook. Once the soup was ready, a kind of fondue party ensued. Family members assembled around the steaming tureen and took turns scooping portions of the mix while joking in Occitan about the length of the strings of cheese.
Families left food out for ancestral spirits
As noted by François Pommerol, a historian and anthropologist who spent most of his life in Gerzat (a town bordering Clermont-Ferrand), people traditionally put their leftover soup to the side as an offering to ancestral spirits. “It was customary,” Pommerol wrote, “to leave some leftover soup in the tureen, which should remain uncovered, to allow the souls of the dead to come and have their meal when the family was at Midnight Mass.” After their meal, these spirits were believed to remain in house and “warm themselves” by the the fireplace.
Candles were used to predict future weather
What would Christmas be without a little practical magic? Interestingly, an old tradition from Courpière — a town in Puy-de-Dôme — held that candles burning during the Midnight Mass service could reveal the direction of the wind for the following year’s harvest season. No special skill or dispensation was needed to acquire this information. All congregants needed to do was observe how the candle flames were leaning.
For more on Auvergne’s folklore and popular traditions, click “Legends and Folklore” below.
