At Christmastime, it means “Season’s Greetings,” and is the perfect holiday phrase to encompass all of the Christmas and New Year’s holiday events. These are the nativity scene shows that are very popular particularly in the south west of France. They are performed at various times during the Christmas season. La fête des Rois If you’re ready to leave behind the word vœux for a spell, souhaits means the same thing—wishes—and can communicate something very similar.

When it comes to Christmas cards, a number of questions are regularly asked by British, American and Canadian expats in France: Are Christmas cards a thing in France? Do the French send greetings cards? Where are all the Christmas cards? This is because, in France, greetings cards are much less culturally important than they are in other countries. Whereas it may be a seasonal tradition to send a “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year” to everyone on your carefully curated Christmas card list, the French are less enamoured by card-based well-wishing and their high streets are almost completely devoid of specialist greetings card shops.Pour cette nouvelle année, nous te présentons nos meilleurs vœux –For this new year, we send you our best wishes There are not many traditional French Christmas carols, and are usually hymns from church instead. That is why many Christmas songs have been taken from UK, Germany and other places. Over time, non-religious songs have been translated from different languages into French, for example the French Jingle Bells is Vive le vent. French Christmas greetings Je vous envoie vœux de Bonheur pour un Joyeux Noël! (I send you happy wishes for a Merry Christmas!) On Christmas cards is common to write short sentences wishing others to spend a happy Christmas day, including happy wishes for the entire holiday season. Midnight Mass — Somewhere in between courses of the Réveillon, most French people will take the time to attend a midnight mass.

This is a Provençal French Christmas tradition but worth mentioning as it sounds so ‘challenging’ – can you imagine having 13 desserts after the main (big) Christmas feast? In France they are important as they symbolise Christ and the 12 apostles at the Last Supper. In addition, French families will always have a Christmas tree with presents placed under it. However, all presents should be placed after December 25th, since Santa Claus is supposed to bring the gifts overnight. You could surprise your friends by learning several Christmas greetings and using different ones depending on the occasion. Best Common French Christmas Greetings

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Que l’année vous procure ___ goes beyond the usual Meilleurs vœux and outlines the positivity you’re wishing into someone’s life for the upcoming year. Now let’s get creative: here are ten Season’s Greetings you could send to your French friends. Please press play on the audio player to hear my recordings of these French Season’s greetings.

Most of the time, however, we don’t use any pronoun, so we simply say Noël instead of “ le Noël”. In “ Joyeux Noël !” for instance: “Joyeux” is the masculine adjective for “Happy.” I’m wishing you an excellent Christmas time with your family. I hope you’ll receive plenty of gifts and that you’ll enjoy the Christmas meal, Champagne and your loved ones!You’ll even have access to learning tools such as interactive subtitles, flashcards, quizzes and more, which make learning through authentic content seamless and effective. Another popular greeting in this period of the year is to wish someone happy holidays. Happy holidays in French would be “joyeuses fêtes”. You could add “de fin d’année” to stipulate it’s the ‘end of year’ holidays, but it’s not necessary. So set out your shoes and hang up the mistletoe, because it’s time to celebrate! Joyeux Noël et Bonne Année ! The curated library has hundreds of videos—some which are Christmas related—where you can see different words and phrases as they are really used by native speakers. By seeing how some of these phrases are present in authentic content, you’ll gain a better idea of how you can use them yourself.