Santa Claus and Sadomasochism

I did not get to go home for Thanksgiving.

On top of this depressing fact, I teach most of my classes on Thursdays. Of course, I spent Thanksgiving day talking about holidays (explaining to my British-taught students that "holidays" in the US are, in fact, not vacations. I didn't even bother to try and explain about holy days and the like). We talked about our favorite holidays, family traditions, foods we eat, our plans for the coming holidays and vacation.

In this discussion, I learned a few things. One is that "Music Day" is considered a sort of holiday, and that I have a few students who really love it. There's a parade in Paris, and people play music all over the place that day. While almost all of my students claim Christmas as their favorite holiday, very few actually decorated anything or even had especially big family dinners. They told me about the Bûche de Noël, a traditional Christmas cake in the shape of a log. I suppose this is something along the lines of the yule log, but in delicious cake form. Mmmmm. So far, I was on board with the French holiday traditions. Delicious cake. Check!

We went on to discuss some of our favorite aspects of the holidays when we finally got to the Christmas story. Recalling David Sedaris's hilarious "Six to Eight Black Men," I absolutely couldn't resist asking these kids what they did the night before Christmas. I talked about Santa Claus, and they told me about "Père Noël," AKA "Father Christmas." I could handle this. We talked about chimneys and presents and the North Pole. And then...

And then they told me about "Père Fouettard." Oh, Père Fouettard...

This, of course, would be "Father Whipper." In France, if you're bad, you don't get coal in your stocking. No, you get whipped.


Fitting, I think.