One of my earliest trips to New York City nearly 40 years ago was at the end of November that happened to coincide with a huge Thanksgiving parade orchestrated by an even bigger department store chain. While those helium filled cartoon character balloons are impressive, I was more in awe of the thousands of store employees, who walked the two and a half mile parade route in below freezing temperatures, yet managed to keep the balloons under control. Another highlight of that trip was viewing the department store windows that had been dressed up especially for Christmas. Although we now live 4000 miles (6400 km) from New York, walking past the festive window displays in Carcassonne was just as much fun. Continue reading “Window hopping”

The city of Carcassonne never seems to do anything halfway. After all, with Europe’s largest medieval fortress as your imposing background, it’s hard to do anything less than big.That thought is carried over into this year’s month-long celebration entitled “La Magie de Noёl” and there is definitely lots of magic in Christmas here. Last week’s post about the torchlight march was just the beginning of a very colorful time in the city. Continue reading “The magic of Christmas”

When I was growing up, the school year always started at the beginning of September and the first holiday we had to look forward to was Halloween. That was followed a month later by Thanksgiving and only after that huge feast was a memory did we start to look forward to Christmas. Somehow, over the years, all of those months got compressed into “Hallo-anks-mas” where store shelves that had been stocked through the summer with back to school supplies were suddenly filled with a combination of candy corn, pumpkin pies, and candy canes. It’s a little bit different here in France. Continue reading “Welcome to the season”