Christmas in Paris
No, I am not actually in Paris – sigh – but I have been armchair traveling!
I have been enjoying the nostalgic and beautifully written short pieces in By-Line: Ernest Hemingway; especially Hemingway’s 1923 essay for the Toronto Star, “Christmas on the Roof of the World.” In this exuberant essay, which was written when Ernest was 24 years old, all of the wonder of Christmas and travel are expressed beginning with Christmas morning in Switzerland. Hemingway’s joy is undeniable as he describes Christmas day with Hadley and Chink:
“Chink had spent every Christmas since 1914 in the army. He was our best friend. For the first time in years it seemed like Christmas to all of us.
We ate breakfast in the old, untasting, gulping, early morning Christmas way, unpacking the stockings, down to the candy mouse in the toe, each made a pile of our things for future gloating.
From breakfast we rushed into our clothes and tore down the icy road in the glory of the blue-white glistening alpine morning.”
Later in the same essay, Ernest describes Christmas time in Milan and Paris. Of Paris, he writes:
“Paris with the snow falling. Paris with the big charcoal braziers outside the cafes, glowing red. At the cafe tables, men huddled, their coat collars turned up, while they finger glasses of grog Americain and the newsboys shout the evening papers.
The buses rumble like green juggernauts through the snow that sifts down in the dusk. White house wall rise through the dusky snow. Snow is never more beautiful than in the city. It is wonderful in Paris to stand on a bridge across the Seine looking up through the softly curtaining snow past the grey bulk of the Louvre, up the river spanned by many bridges and bordered by the grey houses of old Paris to where Notre Dame squats in the dusk.
It is very beautiful in Paris and very lonely at Christmas time.”
The beautiful photographs you see on this post are courtesy of Virginia Jones, who publishes a gorgeous blog called Paris Through My Lens. Virginia is a former teacher and full time photographer who specializes in photos of Paris. She is lucky enough to travel to Paris often, visiting family and friends and providing lovely pictures available on her blog and as cards and prints. Thank you Virginia!
Stay tuned for the next post, which will be about Christmas in Cuba!
Allie,
I’m pleased to share my photographs of Paris with you and your readers. I recently said that although Paris has been described as a “moveable feast”, I think it’s best savored right there! i can’t wait to return and do just that. I will be happy to share more photos in the future.
Joyeux Noël,
V
Virginia, I would love to feature more of your work! Your photos make me want to move to Paris, right now (!), for the rest of my life!
Thank you again, Allie
Joyeux Noël to you, too! Those Photos are really beautiful, it is like you have captured the Christmas spirit in each one of them
Compliments from:Hotel Paris la Defense
I found your blog thanks to our common friend, Virginia. I have now read a number of your interesting and documented posts. Maybe you would be interested to check a post I made about a year ago about Hemingway’s different Paris addresses, bars etc… and you could then tell me if there is something that may not be correct.
Great blog, as always, Allie. Great to see you’re getting back on your feet. Nice new pic of ya, too! Merry Christmas!
A perfect post, Allie.
Perfect photos – and your writing – of Paris at Christmas. (The photos combine beautifully with the background color of your blog.)
Nice new pic of you, too!
Great blog and beautiful Paris photos.
Hopefully we’ll get to see some photos of you there soon writing your book in a cafe !
We took our daughter to Paris on Christmas five years ago when she was 21. (her first visit, not ours)
It was beautiful and stress free when we arrived on Christmas Day. We huddled over espresso at our favorite little coffee shop and couldn’t stop grinning.
Thank you for this lovely post. I’ll sign up to follow Virginia’s blog as well.
Very nice post, I’m glad to see you back. I haven’t been to Paris yet but Hemingway’s books and Virginia’s phstographs make me want to go there even more!
Barb
This is a beautiful post that evokes nostalgia for a snowy, magical Paris in the 1920’s. Great journalism, Allie, and your selections of E’s writing are very of the season and spot on. Thanks again!
Peter- What a comprehensive list.
Years ago I made a pilgrimage to the place off rue Mouffetard — and as dreary as it looked to me around 1980, I could imagine how it was ca. 1925.
At that time I knew the now-dead 1960′s Beat poet Ted Jones* at some of the places like Le Dome, La Coupole; he was trying to sell his archives to a US university to get money to live on. * We were introduced by a man who lived on a private street in the 14ième and gave “rent parties”–but to raise money (then) for Poland. Years later I mentioned this man’s name to a nice woman, much more comfortably off than I, who was on the Board of a philharmonic orchestra with me — and she knew him from college in Edinburgh, years priorly. Paris IS a Moveable Feast.
Hi Adrienne,
Thank you for your comments and for reading The Hemingway Project. It sounds like you had an interesting time in Paris! I love the chance encounters that travel brings – that’s part of what makes it so much fun!
Allie
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