Capital of Christmas, Part I

I am just a little EXCITED to be living in the city that calls itself the capital of Christmas. They take Christmas very seriously in Strasbourg. The Christmas markets here are the most famous in France, and some of the most famous in Europe. A ton of tourists come here for the Christmas season, so they really deck out the city.

The decorating process started early- November 4th. That’s the day that the huge Christmas tree was delivered to Place Kléber (a minute’s walk from my apartment!).

It looked like this.

Two days later when I stopped by Place Kléber again, the tree was up!

Since then, I've gone on walks every few days to check on the decorating progress.

This past weekend, they really stepped things up. Now there’s a lot more decorations on the big tree, and they’ve started putting up the booths for the markets.

I'm so excited for what's to come! When they turn the lights on and open the markets, it's going to be magical!

Since I don’t have the privilege of celebrating Thanksgiving (no pumpkin pie...no Black Friday...tragic), I decided that I was allowed to start listening to Christmas music at the beginning of November. I decided this when I walked into the cathedral one day, they had some lovely French Christmas carols playing. There are few things that I love more in this world than French Christmas music. I’ve been trying to find some good French Christmas music to buy, but every Christmas cd. that I’ve found is at least half American Christmas music that I already have, so it would be a waste of money. But I secretly love that they don’t even make Christmas cds without American contributions wahaha.

So this Friday is the big day when they turn all of the lights on and the Christmas markets open. I’m so there. Can’t wait. I feel like Europe just really understands Christmas.