A rosy dusk in the Place Broglie, where every “Bonjour” leaves a plume of icy punctuation hovering in midair. Frost crunches under the soles of the smiling Strasbourgeois—old ladies in long fur coats, teenage Muslim girls wearing head scarves, young couples with wide-eyed pink-cheeked toddlers, a pair of Hasidic schoolboys, and some cocky soldiers on leave—as they inspect each other and the brimming counters of the rows of knotty-pine Christmas chalets decorated with boughs of holly and garlands of white lights.
By trading Paris for Strasbourg one weekend in early December each year, I find Christmas. In contrast, the French capital revs up for the holidays with slick store windows and the requisite crowds, but its citizens remain basically blasé. Not Strasbourg, whose sincerity is downright disarming. The first time I visited Alsace, years ago, to see the marchés de Noël—the famous open-air markets held from late November at least until Christmas—I expected to find them corny at best, commercial at worst. In fact, they were poignantly authentic and threw me off guard. Strasbourg itself, with its cobbled streets and fairy-tale houses, seemed almost to have been built to serve as the perfect backdrop for Christmas. I’ve been going back regularly ever since.
My latest trip is no exception. Here in the Place Broglie, the air smells of cinnamon and spruce, damp wool and wood-smoke, and the cold makes me hungry. Now an annual visitor to themarchés de Noël, I have my habits down, including a stop for rich, creamy hot chocolate at Chez Mathilde, where I also help myself to a slice of hutzelbrot, a rye-flour Christmas cake that is dense with dates, figs, apricots, and sultanas—delicacies of the Levantine trade. I savor the primal, medieval taste, which brings to mind a Brueghel painting of a peasant feast. I wouldn’t be surprised if hutzelbrot was sold at the first marché de Noël held in Strasbourg, back in 1570.
“Vous voulez goûter?” asks a young woman in a thick wool bonnet with a reindeer motif, offering a tray of sugar-glazed star-shaped cookies to the assembled crowd. The cookies are buttery and delicious, with just a hint of anise. A man in a green loden jacket picks up a few packages of dry noodles seasoned with mace and nutmeg. Sensing our curiosity, he tells us he’ll be serving them with the civet de biche, or venison stew, that’s simmering on the stove at home. The stallholder nods approvingly, and suggests that the noodles also go well with foie gras sautéed with apples. As more recipes are being exchanged, I wander off, and just as I pass the cathedral, the lights go on all around the square, instantly turning the sky overhead to daylight and causing a collective ooh to rise from the crowd. The glee with which this ancient city abandons itself to the holidays is contagious.
But it isn’t only Strasbourg that celebrates, for most Alsatian towns have a Christmas market. In tiny, twinkling Kaysersberg, I get a lesson in baking after stopping to admire some elaborately molded cookies: springerle, white as snow and seasoned with anise, and brown, spicy bredle, in so many shapes and varieties that I can’t begin to remember them all. A white-haired woman with steel-rimmed glasses and soft blue eyes who could pass for Santa’s wife proudly shows me the intricately carved wooden molds they were shaped in. Made of walnut wood and painted with flowers, hearts, garlands, and animals, they make me think of the Pennsylvania Dutch, many of whom, of course, hail from the German part of the Rhineland. Her grandfather crafted the molds, she tells me, and almost every family in Alsace has some just like them. “I made all the cookies,” she boasts, before tossing a few in a bag and handing them to me. “These are for you so that you won’t forget me.” I thank her profusely, and as I walk away, she cries out: “Merry Christmas.”
The market in Kaysersberg and the one in the equally picturesque city of Obernai are wonderfully intimate. But, for me, the five marchés de Noël in the charming city of Colmar are the best of all. There’s one just for Christmas trees (Place Rapp), another mostly for food (Place Jeanne d’Arc), one specializing in art and antiques (the Koïfhus), and still another that sells a little bit of everything (Place de l’Ancienne Douane). But my favorite is La Petite Venise, the toy market, which, among other things, sells miniature kitchenware—wooden rolling pins thinner and shorter than cigarettes, swirled ceramic kugelhopf molds the size of cupcakes, and all the aluminum pots and pans you might consider bringing to a doll’s dinner party. There are also tiny rotary lawn mowers, beautiful little machines with blades sharp enough for shaving. As the stallholder wraps them for me one by one, he tells me about the century-old toy factory, in the nearby Vosges mountains, where they’re made. The precision of the old toymakers is legendary, he says, and everything is still done by hand. He then pulls me close and whispers, as if worried that spies might be lurking nearby: “And if you want a really good meal while you’re here, try the brasserie at the Grand Hôtel Bristol, near the train station.”
I make it a habit to never turn down the (usually) savvy advice of locals, and after a frozen walk to the restaurant, I find the warmth of this busy dining room, decorated with pine boughs and plaid, more than a little bit welcome. It’s a Monday night, but the place is packed. In fact, the only empty seat is at the table of seven to my right. I speak to the hostess, who tells me they’re completely booked. Oh well. I’m buttoning up my coat, sad to be heading back out into the cold and also rather hungry, when someone taps me on the shoulder. “Please join us,” says an older man from the table of seven. I hesitate, but he insists. “After all, it’s Christmas.” Slightly abashed, I take the empty seat at what turns out to be an office dinner for a group of Colmar dentists whose secretary has the flu.
The menu has been prearranged, and an Alsatian feast soon follows: pâté en croûte, sandre (pike-perch) in Riesling sauce with spaetzle, a Mirabelle sorbet, farmhouse Munster with cumin seeds, kugelhopf with cherry ice cream, berawecke (the fruitcake of all fruitcakes), and, finally, an assortment of cookies. The meal ends with rounds of fiery holly-berry eau-de-vie and several toasts. “E gueti Wd´nâchte!” says the elder dentist, nodding at me to repeat the phrase (“Merry Christmas,” in Alsatian). And I do—over and over again—since playing the clown for a minute or two is the least I can do in return for such a wonderful Christmas present.
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