In depth · Christmas & New Year
Christmas on the French Riviera: le réveillon and the thirteen desserts
On the Riviera, as across France, Christmas is a feast: le réveillon, late on Christmas Eve, course after course. Here is what comes to the table, and in what order.
Updated October 2026
Le réveillon: the French Christmas feast
In France the great meal is le réveillon, a long feast of many courses, eaten late on Christmas Eve or after Midnight Mass. It opens with Champagne and the entrées: foie gras on toasted brioche or pain d’épices, with a fig or onion jam; oysters, smoked salmon, langoustines and coquilles Saint-Jacques, scallops; and escargots baked in garlic, parsley and butter.
The roast and the cheese
The plat is a roast bird: dinde aux marrons, turkey with a chestnut stuffing, or a chapon (capon), a goose or a duck. Some tables serve game instead, or a beef Wellington, and regional wines follow the courses.
Then the cheese, with nuts and dried fruit: perhaps a Comté, a Roquefort and a Brie de Meaux.
La bûche de Noël, and the thirteen desserts of Provence
Dessert is the bûche de Noël, a rolled sponge iced and marked to look like a Yule log.
In Provence the gros souper of Christmas Eve ends with les treize desserts, thirteen sweets for Christ and the twelve apostles: dried fruit and nuts, white and black nougat, fresh fruit such as mandarins, and the pompe à l’huile, an olive-oil bread scented with orange-flower water, broken by hand, never cut. At the Christmas markets, warm your hands round a cup of vin chaud, mulled wine.
Our advice: book the réveillon early. Restaurants that open on Christmas Eve usually serve a set menu, and the best tables go weeks ahead.
Questions and answers
What is le réveillon?
The long Christmas Eve feast, eaten late on 24 December or after Midnight Mass: foie gras and seafood, a roast, cheese and the bûche de Noël.
What are the thirteen desserts of Provence?
Thirteen sweets served at the end of the Christmas Eve supper in Provence, for Christ and the twelve apostles: dried fruit and nuts, white and black nougat, fresh fruit and the pompe à l’huile, among others.
We add the Riviera towns’ own 2026 Christmas programmes, the lights, villages and markets, as soon as the official dates are published.