L'heure solennelle

Tout d’abord; Joyeux Noël à mes lecteurs. Je me sens un peu vaseux dû au manque de sommeil, mais j'ai eu beaucoup de plaisir au Réveillon. Noël a commencé avec le traditionnel Minuit Chrétiens qu'on a fait jouer sur Radio-classique. Je sais pas si bous l'avez entendue, mais cette version était... poche. On se demandait même au début si c'était bien le cantique de Noël. On l'a endurée au complet malgré tout. Afin de l'exorciser, j'ai décidé de partager sur Vraie Fiction cette version chantée par Roberto Alagna, la meilleure selon moi. Il faut un vrai ténor avec de la voix pour bien chanter la chanson, que je soupçonne être un air bonapartiste déguisé en chanson religieuse.

The first Christmas...

...in England for me, that is. In an hour, more or less. I spent my first Christmas away from home last year, but never in England. Strange, as I have been living in this country for more than ten years, on and off. We will celebrate it tomorrow, as proper Englishmen, but I will of course solely miss the tradition of my own country: the celebrations starting at midnight with Minuit Chrétiens (O Holy Night, which is ironic to appreciate as an atheist, but I always suspected it was a republican song disguised as a Christian one), the heavy food eaten very early in the morning, the unwrapping of the presents, the Nativity Scene (another one which one may find strange that I miss, but our Nativity Scene in Chicoutimi is beautiful and artistic and besides I always thought that it was filled with Pagan symbolism), waking up children at midnight... Okay, there are no children to wake up yet/anymore, but still. I guess I am still deeply a cultural Catholic and I live Christmas as such, with the same traditions and icons I identify myself to. Old habits die hard, especially these ones. I want to stay up until Midnight, like I used to not so long ago, to be conscious when Christmas starts.

Anyway, I have decided to put here the picture of the Christmas tree we made back in 2008. It is blurry, but in a way it illustrates my state of mind.