Christmas in Paris

Christmas in Paris may not be snowy white, but it’s hard to not be filled with holiday cheer if you’re in Paris in December. The City of Lights lives up to its name in a big way, as the trees that line the Champs-Elysées are among the many trees in Paris that get covered with strings of lights, and the Eiffel Tower often becomes the focal point of the nighttime skyline with its shimmering lights.
In fact, viewing the holiday lights in Paris is one of the top things to do when you’re visiting the city in December. The best places to go to check out the Paris holiday lights are along the aforementioned Champs-Elysées, along the Rue Montorgueil and Rue Mouffetard, in the Place Vendome, in the windows of the big department stores (including the well-known Galeries Lafayette), and at the Notre Dame Cathedral. It’s at Notre Dame that you’ll also get to check out Paris’ Christmas tree, and even if you’re not a religious person you could do worse than to attend a Christmas Eve service in the famous church.
Another Christmas in Paris tradition is the temporary ice skating rinks that get set up around the city. The locations each year may vary, but there are often rinks put up in the square near the Paris City Hall, also known as the Hotel de Ville, and near Montparnasse. They tend to go up in mid-December and stay open through March, so even if you’re visiting Paris after Christmas you can still take a spin. Generally speaking, to go ice skating in Paris on these temporary rinks won’t cost you anything, but if you need to rent the ice skates that’ll be a few euro.
Attending a service in one of Paris’ many churches can be a really wonderful way to spend Christmas Eve, even if you’re not a super-religious person at home. And you don’t even have to speak French to get the most out of a service – there are several English-language services around the city you can take part in. Unfortunately, the website for the Catholic churches of Paris appears to be entirely in French – so you may need some help from a French-speaking friend to translate it and find the English services, or you could just ask the Paris tourism office when you arrive in the city. In addition to attending Christmas mass in Paris’ churches, you may also want to make a tour of the churches during non-service times in order to see the many nativity scenes they’ve erected for the season.
Christmas in Paris, as well as the rest of France, tends to be a family holiday – which means that rather than dining out and partying with friends, Parisians are more likely to be eating big meals in cozy apartments with family and partying privately. Still, for a traveler, Paris at Christmastime can still be magical – there’s a sense of quiet that you may not find in Paris at any other time of year (though don’t assume the streets will be abandoned or anything), and there’s something about the way a city feels when it’s preparing for a family holiday that makes it feel warm… No matter what the temperature is outside.