Celebrating French Culture in Monterey, California by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Celebrating French Culture in Monterey, California with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget


My family has lived on the Monterey Peninsula in California for more than twenty years.  We were able to preserve our family’s French heritage by participating in many of the activities organized by the Alliance Française of the Monterey Peninsula.  The Alliance is subsidized by French Foreign Ministry.

We had some standard activities that we did at the Alliance every year that I have listed below, if other clubs want to do these activities, too:

July 14^th – French Independence Day Celebration with a cake decorated like a French flag, offered by the French Consulate.  We sang the French national anthem, the Marseillaise, and raised our fists to show everyone that the French are America’s oldest ally and helped clinch the US victory against the English General Cornwallis.

The French admiral de Grasse kept food supplies from sailing up the Chesapeake Bay to the English, which literally starved the English into submission.

We also celebrated the Fête de la Musique on June 21^st as the French have done since 1982.  This festival was created by Culture Minister Jacques Lang, because he discovered that one out two people in France had studied a musical instrument.  Lang wanted to celebrate this cultural achievement of the French nation with this festival.

Monterey counted as one of the 700 cities in 120 countries worldwide with our little celebration in one of our member’s homes.  This member could play the bassoon, and we all ate from cheese and fruit trays with wine in sophisticated ambiance.  Florence drank an Orangina.

One year my husband brought in lyric sheets for Jacques Brel songs.  He is a pop singer, but I think our bassoon instrumentalist like having a break from giving a concert.  Our family got everyone singing with our acapella lead-in. 

I think people who would like to retain or reclaim on of their family heritage lines might like to do something like this musical festival with music lyrics in the original languages to sing. 

At Christmas, we did a home celebration, but the whole French community supported buying Christmas logs at one of the French bakeries in town.  The Christmas logs are rolled cakes with French pastry frosting that are decorated to look like they have snow on them.  They are a rich dessert after a French Christmas Eve dinner.  They are good for one day only.

After Christmas, we would go to an Alliance party and have King’s Cake.  This is an Epiphany Cake that is made with almond marzipan and layered pastry.

There is a little porcelain figurine in the cake.  Whoever gets the figurine in their piece of cake gets to be king or queen.  The cake comes with two golden paper crowns.  Whoever finds the little figurine can choose a consort.  They also have to buy the next King’s Cake.

The Alliance also went on monthly walks at the Elkhorn Slough and viewed the wildlife there that changed on a monthly basis, especially the migrating birds.  Sloughs are estuaries that extend far inland and connect ocean water and fresh water.

The French government sent a few cases of Beaujolais Nouveau over at release time, too.  Club members gathered to quaff it with goat cheese, various nuts, and fresh fruit like figs and dried fruits like apricots and dates.  We would use this as a time to go through the French-language library that one member had in her house for winter reading.

In the winter months, the Alliance members would watch all the new film releases from the French government-subsidized cinema.  We watched classic French films, too, and would do round-robin analysis of the films.

Florence also practiced eating European style at Alliance restaurant outings.  We did not go to all of them, because many were at fancy restaurants that cost a lot for a family.  Florence was the only child in this group, too, which could make these outings boring.

So, we went to fun places where Florence held her fork in her left hand and her knife in her right hand and ate with French manners.  We told her she had to keep her hands on the table French-style, too.

The restaurants we went to included:

Monthly lunches held at an Alsatian restaurant and pastry shop.  Its dining room looked like a village square with a bubbling fountain in the middle of it.  We had quiches and soup or croissant sandwiches with soup here.

Quarterly lunches at a Parisian-style bistro for cassoulet, sweetbreads, magret de canard, onion soup, and steak frites.

Weekly croissant and baguette runs from a Paris-style bakery.

Frequent trips to a Big Sur restaurant with an all-window view on Bixby Bridge.  We liked the enchiladas verdes here.

Yearly trips to a Swiss restaurant for fondue.

Many trips to a Vietnamese restaurant for Pho, which was based on French pot-au-feu – Vietnam was part of the French colony of Indochina, and I wanted Florence to know about this country.  I did not know much about Vietnam myself and enjoyed learning about it.

One of the most memorable events we did with the Alliance was meet the Queen Mother of France, Marisol de la Tour d’Auvergne (House of Orléans).  She had sponsored publication of the book French America and was doing an author signing at the home of an Alliance member, who lived in Pebble Beach.

We mingled with everyone and when the crowd thinned out, I asked the Queen Mother if Florence could ask her some questions about theatre, since she loved doing musicals at her middle school at the Carmel Mission (Junipero Serra School).

“Of course,” she answered.

The French Queen Mother’s publicist was an English aristocrat, whose daughter was an actress in a West End Theatre in London.  She knew Florence’s etiquette teacher at the Carmel Mission, who was a retired etiquette advisor to Queen Elizabeth II. 

She smiled when Florence said, “Votre Altesse, may I ask you some questions about royal boxes at the theatre in France and England and some questions about comedic theatre in France and England?”

I had prompted Florence on the questions and slipped away to mingle.  Florence spent an hour with the queen.  When Florence came back to me, she was laughing and said, “The Queen of France says it is darling I have learned to play the recorder, triangle, glockenspiel, xylophone, and cymbals in music class at school.”

“More like training to be a Pied Piper of Hamelin,” I said.  I noticed the Queen Mother of France did not believe in Salic Law, which gives male relatives only the right to inherit thrones in France.

Before leaving, we shook everyone’s hand and told them how much we had enjoyed the evening.  We promised we would all read French America as soon as we could. 

I just smiled that they did have all the information in there on Charleston, South Carolina with its Huguenot Cathedral and Louisville, Kentucky with its thoroughbred horses, bourbon, estates on hills, fine dining tradition, the Derby, mint juleps (colonial drink obviously), and refined church architecture.

(There are two books I would recommend for people who are interested in developing their language skills for work in the US Diplomatic Corps.  They are somewhat dated, but still provide insider information: The Complete FSOT (Foreign Service Officer Test Study Guide including complete coverage of the FSO Selection Process by Robert Clark and Inside a U.S. Embassy: Diplomacy by Shawn Dorman.)

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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