Searching for Christmas in Paris

Christmas here is subtle, partly because the city cannot be significantly improved by red bows and tinsel. All year long, electric lights turn the Eiffel Tower into a gigantic Christmas tree and what are Sacre-Coeur, Notre Dame, L’Opera, Les Invalides if not ornaments?

Paris decorates for Christmas in early December, but -- so like the French -- only in the most tasteful and discreet way. Manger scenes are rare in this insistently secular nation. I recently read in Le Figaro that a public school teacher in a small town in western France refused to hand out chocolate figurines of St. Nick to her children because the treats depicted Santa’s forerunner holding such religious accouterments as a miter and missal.

But I’ve been searching for Christmas in Paris because this is my first holiday season away from the U.S. and I don’t want to spend it homesick. At a florist on the Left Bank’s Rue de Buci market, I found small trees for about $50 and wreaths for $40. Then I noticed a pile of cast-off pine boughs heaped in a corner of the shop, which I bought for $4 and arranged in a vase, aromatic but naked because I didn’t bring Christmas ornaments when I moved here in March.

I planned a turkey dinner with all the trimmings -- one menu the French haven’t perfected -- and found what I needed at Thanksgiving, a shop on the Right Bank that’s favored by American expatriates. There were poultry thermometers, aluminum baking dishes, skewers for securing the stuffing inside the turkey -- but all shockingly dear, so I abandoned the project. It simply isn’t in me to pay $12.50 for a box of StoveTop stuffing.

Of course, Christmas justifies shopping, which is always a joy in Paris, particularly because consumerism here is more a matter of quality than quantity; one buys fewer but better gifts at small specialty shops instead of malls. And, for once, French merchants, who routinely lock their doors for several hours at lunchtime, catch the spirit of capitalism by opening on Sundays.

I bought several small boxes of choice sweets at La Maison du Chocolat on the Rue de Sevres, where the salespeople wear gloves while handling pralines and truffles. Someone else on my list will be smelling of Les Nuits d’Hadrien scented soap from Paris perfumery Annick Goutal, and I ran amok at Laurence Tavernier on Rue Pre-aux-Clercs, a boutique with enchanting nightgowns, pajamas, robes and slippers. Alas, the spell was broken when the saleswoman got an anonymous dirty call from a pervert who telephones the shop regularly. “If he ever comes in, I’ll recognize his voice and God help him,” she said.

Warts like that bring Paris to life for me. With the temperature in the 40s, fragile Parisians complain, and a bum has taken to sleeping in the foyer of my apartment building. A French friend who visited me said, “At least he knows a good address when he sees one.”

I love bundling up and walking fast to keep warm, under a milky winter sky. Old women are wearing fur coats that look as though they’ve been under wraps since the reign of Pepin the Short. Knee-length boots with spindly heels are in style and, as it turns out, French men are just as adept at the art of scarf-tying as French women, though silk has yielded to wool in the cold weather.

One afternoon, with my Christmas shopping finished, I strolled across the Pont des Arts, from the Left Bank to the Right, then wended my way along narrow streets north of the Rue de Rivoli, headed for the Pompidou Centre. Inside Paris’ striking modern art museum, I found a uniquely French holiday exhibition of Christmas trees created by top couturiers and designers. Versace’s tree was made of red net and roses. Chanel’s was shaped like a perfume bottle, with a video monitor instead of a label showing the company’s new ad featuring Nicole Kidman. But my favorite entry was a pair of red high heels, with bushy Christmas tree pompoms at the toes, by Bruno Frisoni.

From there I walked toward the Place Vendome, hoping to find Christmas lights on the 130-foot column there. Instead, the Swiss tourism bureau had decorated the elegant square with huge silver ornaments and a booth dispensing information on visiting Switzerland. To drown my disappointment, I stopped at Harry’s Bar, around the corner on Rue Daunou, one of the rare places in Paris where they know how to mix a dry martini.

Then I joined crowds of children with eyes fixed on Christmas windows at Printemps and Galeries Lafayette, two big French department stores on the Boulevard Haussmann. That made me think of the way my mother used to take me shopping in downtown St. Louis every year one Saturday before Christmas. We ate onion soup (as good as any I’ve had in Paris) in the cafe at the old Famous-Barr department store there, bought shopping bags full of gifts and went to a movie. I remember with special clarity the year we saw “How the West Was Won.”

Another day, I saw the postage-stamp-sized skating rink set up for the holidays on the first level of the Eiffel Tower and then attended a Christmas concert at the American Church on the Quai d’Orsay, where little girls in red velvet dresses wandered the aisles during a hand-bell rendition of “Angels We Have Heard on High.”

Still, I’m sitting in my apartment with my nose pressed to the window, wishing I could spend the holidays in L.A., where they know Santa will never come unless someone puts lights in the front yard and chocolate chip cookies on the mantel.

Susan Spano also writes “Postcards From Paris,” which can be read at www.latimes.com/susanspano.