Breathing Space

Paris' tiny streets are crowded with people pushing over-sized Maclaren strollers and walking pampered dogs. Bicycles and motorcycles weave between nervous cars, while pedestrians elbow each other to make it to the bus or métro. When they can't take it anymore, they all flee to the seaside or mountains, where the sand and slopes are dotted with the same crowds left behind in Paris. 

Dieu merci for Southern California. Even with more and more land being swallowed up by cookie-cutter houses and malls, there's enough wiggle room for everyone to breathe in her skinny jeans.   

Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall as Carrie Bradshaw and Samantha Jones. [DVD screenshot] 2000.

Home

There's no French equivalent to "home," except maybe, chez moi, but the sense of unconditional belonging is lost: chez moi is temporal.
In French, a homing pigeon is a pigeon voyageur, or traveling pigeon. The home base idea doesn't seem to be important.
Perhaps France is too small a country for people to feel disoriented enough to need an abosolute home. They can go chez les parents or chez les beaux-parents or chez les cousins whenever they like.
They don't have to subtract nine hours every time they dial "home" or fly twelve hours to get there.
But then they don't have the promise of "home" either.

Vivien Leigh as Katie Scarlett O'Hara. [Online image] 1939.

"Magique Pour Tous"

Holiday magic may be for the kids, but it's we adults who need it most. And the French seem quite all right with indulging us.

They might not be into hanging up stockings over the fireplace, but they let us sprinkle santons of miniature lambs and pumpkin-carrying ladies on top of our grown-up meubles. And though making gingerbread houses isn't very big here, it's totally acceptable to spend an evening trying to turn a chocolate cake into a snow-covered log.

Giant Santas and reindeer might be scarce in the City of Lights, but parents will stop to look at winter scenes of dancing princesses and twitching rabbits in store windows or at the glittering strands of lights that guide shoppers to rues commerçantes like stars.

Natalie Wood and Maureen O'Hara as Susan and Doris Walker. [Online image] 1947.