Master French Christmas: Essential Phrases, Traditions & Holiday Meals

Hi, hi, hi everybody. So I'm Caroline. I will be your French teacher in this course. So this course is all about Christmas. So I hope you guys are as excited as me about the coming Christmas. And if you guys spend Christmas in France or with French people, you will need the correct vocabulary to impress and to discuss Christmas dishes, Christmas decoration and cultural nuances. So this is what you will learn in this course. So in this course you will learn to master essential French vocabulary. So vocabulary talking about food, talking about decoration, talking about what we do at Christmas time, etc, etc. I will also give you a lot of insight so you can understand French culture and what happens at Christmas in France, what we usually do, what you could do, what you cannot do. And we will also practice in real life situations. So like basically what can you discuss, what phrases you can use at the Christmas table. And also you will have bonuses such as French Christmas recipe, quizzes, and also downloadable files. So I will get you all ready and set up for Christmas. And if you do this course from the beginning to the end, you will see that you will be able to impress people around you at Christmas this year. Bye. See you soon in the next video. Hi everybody. Here we are in the section 2. So today we will practice keyword vocabulary to talk about Christmas. We will learn to pronounce the words correctly. And yes, we will learn very interesting words that you might need to use at Christmas around the table. Okay, so here in this section you will find downloadable files. So one file with two pages like these ones here. And these pages, you have the word and you have the image. So what it means. So we will go one by one and we will practice pronouncing these words and I will explain a little bit what they mean. Okay, I take the first file, so this one here. And our first word is un cadeau. Un cadeau means a gift. Second word, un bonnet. Un bonnet is a hat that you put on your head to keep yourself warm in winter. Un lutin. Lutin is the Christmas Santa Claus helper. These little things that in the legend help making the gift and sorting out everything. Okay, on the other side here we have un bonhomme de neige, a snowman. So if there is snow and the kids feel like it, they go outside and they make un bonhomme de neige. And just below, un renne. A reindeer. Un renne. And then of course, le sapin de Noël. So Christmas tree. Noël is Christmas, sapin is a pine. So a pine Christmas tree. Below, une guirlande. Here you can see what it is. Une guirlande. We use it to decorate the Christmas tree. Sometimes we just hang it on the walls. Un flocon de neige. If you are lucky this Christmas and you have snow, you can say un flocon de neige. Okay, on the other side here we have un chaussette, which means a sock. So yes, we Santa Claus fill up the sock with the cadeau that we have here. Un calendrier de l'Avent. So I don't know if you have this at home. Un calendrier de l'Avent, this is very popular in France. So on December 1st, the little kids get that from their parents. So a calendrier has 24 pockets. And every day the kids open one box and find a little present or a little chocolate in there. Just to count the days until Christmas. So calendrier de l'Avent. Okay, now I will repeat the vocabulary on this page. And I invite you to repeat after me to practice your pronunciation. One by one. Un cadeau. Un bonnet. Un bonhomme de neige. Un lutin. Un renne. Un sapin de Noël. Une chaussette. Une guirlande. Un calendrier de l'Avent. Un flocon de neige. Okay, I invite you to repeat as many times as necessary these words. Just to memorize them, to pronounce them properly. And to try to build some short sentences with them. And now I go to the second page of this same file. And we have here 10 more words. The first one is une cheminée. So a chimney. The place where you put wood to light, to make fire, to keep warm in winter. So all the traditional houses in France usually have une cheminée. And it's very normal to sit by at Christmas Eve. And to have a glass of wine or champagne by the cheminée. Next here, une messe de minuit. So traditionally, French people go to church on Christmas. And we have what we call a messe de minuit. So there is a ceremonial at midnight at the church for Christmas. So usually this messe lasts quite long, like two hours or more. It starts a little bit before Christmas and it ends before midnight, sorry. And it ends just after. It's usually quite long, so it's a bit hard for small kids to stay still for the whole time. But some people still go to church on Christmas. Even though the new generation has a bit less belief in God. But all the people still like to go to church on Christmas. And this specific ceremonial is called une messe de minuit. Because it finishes slightly after midnight. Okay, here we have une crèche de Noël. So crèche de Noël, this is something we put next to the tree at Christmas, next to the Christmas tree. It represents the gods, yes, Jesus Christ, Mary and her husband. And sometimes we find the roi mage. Roi mage is the three kings. It's more of a Spanish tradition, I think. I don't know exactly how you call them in English. But we found all the characters important for Christmas here. And we just put this small kind of house next to the Christmas tree. Grandparents usually put the little Christ just at midnight on Christmas day. Just to symbolize his birth is coming. It's still quite popular to put the crèche next to the Christmas tree. Okay, here, le froid. So obviously at Christmas in France it is usually very cold. So froid just means cold. If we are lucky, we have snow as well, but it's not every year. It happens maybe every second year. In Brittany, where I am from, in the south of France, or in the mountains, of course, it's a lot more often. And in Paris, sometimes they have snowflakes. Yes, for a few days, but it doesn't last very long in the States. But it is always cold. Okay, un traîneau. A sleigh. Un chant de Noël. So when we go to the messe de minuit, we usually sing songs, Christmas songs. And this is what we call chant de Noël. Okay, here we have du houx. So we use houx to decorate actually the house at Christmas. We find houx when we hike in the countryside. It's a plant that grows well in winter. So we traditionally pick this plant and decorate the house with it. Un ruban. So ruban is the thing you use to pack the Christmas present. It's exactly like this. Actually, I may have some here. Yes, for example, this can be ruban to decorate the Christmas presents. And usually it is red. Okay, moufles. Because it's very cold at Christmas, usually when kids go outside to build un bonhomme de neige, we ask them to wear moufles to keep warm so their fingers don't freeze. Okay, and une lettre de Noël, the Christmas letter. It is still very normal for kids to write a Christmas letter and to send it to Christmas post office. We have an address in France where actually you will get an answer if you write to them. So usually we teach the kids to, you know, use conditional form and to say Je voudrais. I would like. J'aimerais. I would like to have. J'aimerais avoir. La la la la la la. And then there is whatever you wish to have for Christmas. Okay, I will go here through the vocab once again for pronunciation. And I invite you to repeat after me. Une cheminée. Une messe de minuit. Le froid. Une crèche de Noël. Un traîneau. Un champ de Noël. Un ruban. Du hout. Des moufles. Une lettre de Noël. Okay, I wish you a very lovely day and then I will see you in the next video. And we will talk about the Christmas table and also Christmas decorations. Have a lovely day and see you soon in the next video. Bye! Hi again everybody. In section 3, we will focus on the decoration vocabulary. I have a few things with me here that I will show you as we go along and I will give you the name of all these things. Yes, Christmas decoration is a big thing in France. We like to, you know, put up the Christmas tree at least a month before Christmas. We decorate the house and usually we do that on a Sunday when the whole family is gathering together. That's a very important part of Christmas and we love that moment. Yes, it's very convivial and what we mean by convivial is that it gets everybody together in a very happy mood, very festive. So we have a word for that. We call it convivialité. Okay, so the vocabulary for Christmas. Here in this section, you will find a downloadable file with again 20 words that we use for Christmas. You will also find some verbs because we're going to try to build short sentences to use this vocabulary. Okay, first we go with the vocab, so the things that we need. Okay, and the first one on that first file, it is Un rouleau de papier cadeau. I repeat again. Un rouleau de papier cadeau. So papier cadeau is a wrapping paper, so we use that to wrap the presents. Okay, next. Une étoile. I repeat again. Une étoile. Une étoile, this is what we put on top of the Christmas tree. I have one here. It's ready for my Christmas tree. It is not up yet, but it will be soon. So yeah, very important part of the Christmas tree. But sometimes we also put a little Santa Claus character, small thing. But these days it's more popular to put the star up the tree. Okay, next one. Des boules de Noël. Boules de Noël, yes, they come in many colors. Here I have the red ones. We also put them all around the tree to decorate. This is usually the smaller kid's job. And yes, very enjoyable time of the year to decorate the tree. Un ange. Un ange, so the angel. Un sapin de Noël. The Christmas tree again. Un sapin de Noël. Usually French people like to have the real Christmas tree, but sometimes we also buy the plastic ones if it's easier or if we live in the small apartment. But if we have a garden, we like to have the real one. Oh, yes. Un renne de Noël. Des cloches. Des cloches, the bells. Une guirlande. So in the previous file, we already had guirlande. But this time we have in guirlande, luminous. So with lights. So I have one here. It's really for my Christmas tree. It's not up yet, but it will be soon. Yes, this is what we call guirlande luminous with the lights up there. Already here. Okay, and then there's étiquettes. So there's étiquettes, labels. This is sometimes used for the Christmas presents. There's étiquettes such as these ones here. Okay, and the paillettes. Paillettes is glitters. The paillettes. Okay, now I will take the second page of this file and we continue for the Christmas decoration. What do we have here? Here we have des bougies. I'll repeat again. Des bougies. Candles. This is maybe for the table. Un sucre d'orge. This we use to put on the tree usually. With des ornements. We don't forget the liaison between S and O. Ornements, this is what we call everything that we put on the tree to decorate. So this is basically the boule de Noël and the sucre d'orge and the guirlande and the cloche. All of this we call it together ornements. Une couronne de Noël. Couronne de Noël, this is what we put on the door at Christmas. Okay, now here we go. We have a couple of verbs and we also have this. Rouge et or. Red and golden. This is the Christmas colors. And the verbs. Okay, so today in these coming exercises we will only practice present tense because this is the first tense you need to know to be able to make sentences in French. And I give you five verbs here and in the exercises you will have to try to build sentences with these verbs in the present tense using this vocabulary before. Okay, we go for the verbs at the infinitive form. Plier. Plier is to fold. Plier. Couper. Couper is to cut. Emballer. Emballer is to wrap. Nouer. Nouer is to tie it, to make a knot actually. And then coller, to glue. Maybe you want to glue the label, I don't know, a nice knot, whatever you need, yes. Okay, now let's go and let's practice this vocabulary with the next assignment. I will see you soon in the next session and good luck with the assignment. Bye. Hi everybody, this is Caroline again for section four of this course. In section four we will learn to talk about Christmas table. So we will learn some key vocabularies and we will also learn some verbs. Then we're going to try to write a very short whole play, a question you can ask somebody when you get to the Christmas table and how you can answer it if someone is asking you about the Christmas table, in French of course. Okay, so first the vocabulary. In this section you will find a downloadable file with two pages of vocabulary. So first we go through the vocabulary and then I will see you again later in the assignment to practice this vocab that we are learning. First word in the first sheet is un marque-page. Un marque-page, oh sorry, un marque-page is actually to mark the page on your book but this is un marque-place, to mark the place on the table. Un marque-place. Une serviette de table. Napkin. Des flûtes de champagne. So the glasses with which you drink champagne. Le plat principal. So this is the main course. La dinde. Turkey. Very important. La dinde. Les couverts. The cutlery. Les couverts. La bûche de Noël. Very popular French dessert for Christmas. La bûche de Noël. This is so French because it's packed with butter. Very heavy but very nice also. Un plateau de fruits de mer. Fruits de mer is seafood. Seashells. So it's very common for Christmas that we have an appetizer with flûtes de champagne and that we have two or three starters actually and then one or two main course and after that desserts. Yes. Oh and cheese before dessert of course. So un plateau de fruits de mer. This is one of the different starters that we have at Christmas. Another one would be le foie gras. Le foie gras. It's a bit controversial at the moment because of how it's made. And then after this foie gras, plateau de fruits de mer, we have la dinde and then we usually have cheese and bread and then la bûche de Noël and after that, if you still have a bit of space, we have des truffes au chocolat. This is just butter, sugar and chocolate put together in a bowl. It's very, very delicious but very heavy again. And yes, how come we can eat all of these things just in one evening? It is because we pass a lot of time at the table at Christmas. So usually we start appetizer around 7, 8 p.m. but we don't finish eating before 2 a.m. So sometimes people go to la messe de minuit, so to church, so they have a little break. So they have appetizer, starter and sometimes main course first and then they go to church and then they come back later for dessert and truffes au chocolat. And other times we also have a break at midnight. Some families open the gift at midnight. So we have a break and then we eat the dessert afterwards. So it depends but we pass a lot, a lot of time at the table. So we are able to eat a lot but like every hour we eat one thing, little bit by little bit by little bit. And there's a few more things that we eat at Christmas. So on the plateau de fruit de mer, we usually find huîtres, des huîtres, oysters and sometimes also du saumon fumé, smoked salmon, du saumon fumé. So plateau de fromage, that is very important and we have usually 10-ish type of cheese on it. So we love our cheese as you know. So we like them when they are smelly, sometimes like Le Bleu. But kids love better Comté, Cantal or this kind of cheeses that are a bit less tasty but less smelly also. So apéritif, appetizer. L'apéritif is the first part. This is where we drink champagne and eat small things. And sometimes we have wine also. Du vin chaud, this is what we find not especially on the Christmas table but around Christmas time. So a few weeks before Christmas on the Christmas markets, we usually find vin chaud which is a Christmas wine. It is a warm wine with spices like cinnamon, orange sometimes as well, things like that. Okay, so now we have four verbs that come with this vocabulary. Dresser la table. Dresser la table is to put the table, to set the table. So to put the cutleries on the table, the plates on the table, the napkins on the table. And usually for Christmas, we like to decorate with many other things. So the table looks very pretty and nice. Déboucher une bouteille, to open a bottle. So when we open the wine, when we open the champagne, it's always a very happy moment. And we call it déboucher une bouteille. Server un plat, to serve a dish. Se réunir which is to gather. Linked to la convivialité which is an expression that means to get together and to have a good time together. Okay, now in the next assignment, we're going to practice a role play using this vocabulary. So I will tell you more in the next video. Bye. Hi, so here we are in the section 5 talking about Christmas carols. And I put in this section two downloadable files for two songs that are very popular at Christmas. I can't sing unfortunately, so I'm not going to sing the song for you. But I did put the links of the YouTube videos on those files. And you can find on the file the lyrics, the link to YouTube, some fun facts and the history of these two songs. They are super popular songs. So if you are having Christmas dinner in France, I'm pretty sure that you will hear them. So maybe it's good for you to be able to discuss it a little bit and to know fun facts or other things to animate the Christmas table. So good luck and enjoy listening to them. And I will see you again in the next session. Hi, everybody. It's Caroline again. And now we are going to talk about past tenses so we can share stories together about Christmas. So when we tell stories, we need more than present tense. Usually we will talk about the past, about the last year, the Christmas when we were small, what we were doing, about habits, etc., etc. So when we come to talk about the past, the difficulty in French is to choose the right tense. So we have a couple of different tenses, but the most important ones in the past are passé composé and imperfect. Passé composé is used to talk about the actions. Imperfect is used to describe or to talk about habits. So sometimes in one sentence, we mix passé composé and imperfect depending on what we say. And sometimes we stick to one or the other. For example, now if I want to say, when I was small, when I was small, I always decorated the Christmas tree with my family. Because now I talk about habits, I was doing it for every year when I was small, I will use imperfect. And you will find the imperfect conjugation in a downloadable file attached to this video. So if I want to say in French, in imperfect tense, when I was small, I was always decorating the Christmas tree with my family. It will become, Quand j'étais petite, j'étais is to be, être in imperfect tense. Quand j'étais petite, je décorais, décorais is the verb décorer, conjugated in the imperfect tense, toujours le sapin avec ma famille. Je décorais toujours le sapin avec ma famille. Now if I want to talk about yesterday, something happened yesterday. Yesterday, when I was at the bakery, somebody screamed. When I was is the description of what I was doing when I was at the bakery. It's the background situation. This will be in imperfect tense. Someone screamed, this will be in passé composite because this is the main action. So when I was at the bakery, Quand j'étais à la boulangerie, imperfect, j'étais is to be, again in imperfect tense because it's the background of the story. Quand j'étais à la boulangerie, someone screamed. Quelqu'un, someone, a crié. A crié is the verb crier in passé composite because this is the main action. So when we start to tell stories about the past, we always mix passé composite and imperfect depending on the situation. Now you might want to tell stories about when you were a kid, what you were doing for Christmas, so you will most likely use imperfect. Now attached to this video, you can find downloadable files about passé composite and imperfect. And then you will have a quiz to try to pick the right tense just to test and to double check that you understood everything. And after that, in the next video, we will practice telling stories about Christmas. See you soon in the next video. Hi everybody. So here we go again. Now that you know how to conjugate the verbs in the past tense, we will come to the part where we gonna write and tell short stories. Okay, I will give you some key phrases so you know how to start your story. And you will find attached to this video a downloadable file with the key phrases. I will read them out loud for pronunciation and I invite you to repeat after me. After that, you will have an assignment to write your favorite holiday in memory. And I will also write you an example so you can see how to do it. Okay, first to read and repeat the key phrases. Here we go. The first one is Quand j'étais petite. If you are a man. If you are a woman, you should say Quand j'étais petite. And you will find the translation on that file. Okay, key phrase number two. Chaque Noël nous. Number three. Je me souviens de. Pendant les vacances de Noël, je suis allée. Nous avons décoré le sapin de Noël avec. La veille de Noël, nous avons préparé. J'ai reçu un cadeau incroyable, c'était. Il neigeait beaucoup, alors nous avons décidé de. Toute la famille s'est réunie pour. Nous avons chanté des chants de Noël comme. Le repas de Noël était délicieux, nous avons mangé. Les enfants étaient très énervés parce que. C'était un moment magique parce que. Okay, so now that you have the vocabulary from the sections two, three, and four, and you also have the tenses from this section, and now you have the key phrases, we try to combine everything together to tell our favorite Christmas memory. So I will see you in the assignment and I wish you a lovely day. Hi, everybody. So here we are now in section seven, real life scenarios. And here we will combine everything we learned once again to imagine ourselves. At the Christmas dinner and imagine what we can actually tell people, how we can make conversation, how we can discuss things. So we combine all the vocabulary, the grammar, the conjugations, the key phrases we learned, and we create these scenarios that we can memorize or that we can, yeah, just practicing using the words for easier conversation at Christmas. So the first assignment you will have to do, the first scenario will be arriving at a Christmas dinner. What can you say when you arrive, how the person might answer you, and to be ready to reply to that person. Scenario two will be discussing decorations. So one thing you can talk about when you arrive is the decoration, the Christmas tree, etc, etc. So practicing this, imagine what you can say, how the person might answer you, what the other person might ask you, and how you can reply to that person. Scenario three, complimenting and discussing the meal. And scenario four, discussing gifts. So you can imagine anything you like, this is your chance to practice, this is your chance to make mistakes. And you can send me your assignment, I will correct them. Otherwise I also give you solutions to these assignments. You can practice reading the assignments, reading the solutions, pronunciating it, everything you can do will help you at Christmas. So good luck with this section seven and these assignments. I'm sure you can do it. Do your best and you will see that you will do great on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.