DOMINIQUE STRAUSS-KAHN; LILIANE BETTENCOURT; BERNARD TAPIE

This month of February, two long-running legal sagas have finally gone to court in France: those of Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Liliane Bettencourt. Another matter, thought long settled, bounced back to Bernard Tapie and into the news.

DOMINIQUE STRAUSS-KAHN

DSK in Lille

After the two-week trial of the Carlton Affair in Lille where he stood accused of aggravated pimping, a haggard-looking Dominique Strauss-Kahn could finally leave town and await the verdict, due in June, with some optimism. Following many days of testimony by a cast of characters that included prostitutes and an unsavory Belgian procurer named Dodo La Saumure, the final phase of his fall from grace contained at least one positive note for DSK when the prosecutor called for the charges against him to be dropped for lack of evidence. The man is being judged on legal grounds not moral ones, was the message, and legally the case was weak. 

If this trial with its share of sordid details did not elicit any laughs, the one who must have raised at least a chuckle was Dodo The Pimp when he said:  "Dominique Strauss-Kahn has tarnished my reputation."

THE BETTENCOURT CASE

Liliane Bettencourt

Twice postponed, the case concerning Liliane Bettencourt, heir to the L'Oreal fortune and France's richest woman (estimated net worth €33 billion), was finally heard in Bordeaux seven years after Bettencourt's daughter and only child, Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers, filed a criminal complaint for "exploitation of a person's mental and physical fragility for personal gain". She specifically accused François-Marie Banier, photographer, writer and society figure, of exercising undue influence on her mother and illegally obtaining gifts valued at €1 billion, while at the same time driving a wedge between mother and daughter.

Banier met Liliane Bettencourt when he was commissioned to photograph her for a magazine in 1987 and became friends with Mrs. Bettencourt and her husband Guy, who died in 2007. Witty, clever and entertaining, Banier became a frequent visitor and confidant of Mrs. Bettencourt who was interested in the arts.

In 2007, tipped off by people on her mother's household staff, Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers became aware of her mother's extreme generosity toward Banier and feared his increasing hold over her. In addition to gifts totaling around one billion euros (real estate, life insurance policies, master paintings, cash) she had also named him sole heir (since revoked). Those in Mrs. Bettencourt's immediate environment who disliked Banier's "arrogant ways" were happy to provide Françoise with evidence (including phone conversations secretly taped by the butler) of "advisors" exploiting her mother's alleged senility. Françoise's findings as well as her request that her mother undergo a medical examination of her mental state infuriated Liliane Bettencourt and caused the estrangement between mother and daughter that lasted for years but failed to sideline Banier. Françoise then filed a criminal complaint and turned the tapes over to the police.

Mrs. Bettencourt with friend Banier

Mrs. Bettencourt's personal bookkeeper told the court of regular cash payments to conservative political figures, including Nicolas Sarkozy (since cleared from wrongdoing for lack of evidence) and former Budget Minister Eric Worth who allegedly obtained illegal cash contributions for Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign and a job for his wife. The taped phone calls also revealed a multi-million euro gift of works of art to Banier's long-time companion Martin d'Orgeval and of €12 million in cash to Patrice de Maistre. The latter, who was Mme Bettencourt's financial manager, is overheard to give her advice on tax evasion, and persuaded her to invest €143 million in an online poker game company run by a friend of his.

In all, ten people are alleged to have profited illegally from Liliane Bettencourt's largesse and fragile mental state. Among them was her former nurse Alain Thurin, 64, who tried to commit suicide by hanging just hours before the trial opened and remains today in a coma.

Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers

Mrs. Bettencourt did not attend the trial. Frail and judged by a court-appointed medical team to be suffering from "dementia and moderately severe Alzheimer's disease" since 2006, she was declared incompetent to attend to her own affairs in 2011 and has since been placed under the legal guardianship of her eldest grandson, Jean-Victor Meyers.

The five-week trial in Bordeaux ended last week, with the verdict to be rendered on May 28th. But that may not be the end of it.  
Consider the scenario: a mother-daughter feud stoked by the mother's friend and court jester, an attempted suicide, spying servants, sticky-fingered lawyers, politicians, financial advisors and supplicants, all ready to take advantage of a confused elderly widow with too much money. This has all the makings of a great television series.

BERNARD TAPIE

Controversial French businessman and sometime actor Bernard Tapie got a nasty surprise on February 17th when the Court of Appeals of Paris overturned the 2008 decision by the Court of Arbitration that awarded Tapie €403 million for the fraudulent sale by the Crédit Lyonnais bank (CL) of Adidas, a company Tapie owned at the time. The Court of Appeals found that Tapie and his lawyer had pre-existing links to one of the three Arbitrators of the case, whose judgment was therefore considered not impartial and rendered the conclusion invalid. It is not clear how much money Tapie will have to reimburse.

Bernard Tapie with President Mittérand

In 1992, Tapie decided he wanted to go into politics and was named Minister of City Affairs by then president François Mittérand on condition that he divest himself of any business he owned so as to avoid potential conflicts of interest. Having bought the Adidas sportswear company several years earlier with the help of a loan from public bank Crédit Lyonnais, he asked CL to assist in the sale of Adidas and set the asking price at €335 million. In 1993, having found no takers, CL offered to buy Adidas itself and paid Tapie his asking price but soon afterward sold the company for €701 million to businessman Robert-Louis Dreyfus. Tapie claims that CL had known of the potential buyer all along but kept him hidden in order to make the deal itself. He sued CL and after fourteen years of legal proceedings Tapie requested and Christine Lagarde, then Economics Minister of President Nicolas Sarkozy, accepted that the matter be submitted to Arbitration for a speedier resolution. [Note: Tapie had meanwhile switched allegiance from the socialist to the centre-right UMP party, where he found the backing of Sarkozy just as he had won over Mittérand before.] The parties chose three arbitrators, who concluded that Tapie had indeed been cheated and ordered CL to pay him €403 million in damages and interest. 

Bernard Tapie with "supporters" Sarkozy and Lagarde

This may seem just another business dispute, but everything concerning the colorful Bernard Tapie tends to become a matter of national interest. He is handsome, brash, pugnacious and visible, able to charm men and women alike. A self-made millionaire, he has made and lost fortunes, owned a successful cycling team (winning the Tour de France twice), and the OM football club of Marseilles (national champion four times in a row). But in 1994 he was accused of match fixing, spent six months in prison, and had to resign as government minister. Released from prison, bankrupt, banned from football and ineligible for public office, he decided to become an actor and appeared in a film by Claude Lelouch, Hommes, Femmes, Mode d'Emploi, on stage in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, on television in the series Commissaire Valence and as a TV game show host. In 2011 he was the subject of an American documentary: "Who is Bernard Tapie?" by Marina Zenovich. 

In 2013 he bought a string of newspapers in the south, including the biggest regional paper La Provence, which brought him back to Marseilles where he was fondly remembered for his golden years at OM and where his outsize personality was a natural fit. Here, the gutsy street kid who outsmarts the stuffed-shirt bankers, dares to think big, is bling-bling to his eyebrows, happy to show off with a yacht, private plane, and multiple residences, is a bit of a comic-strip hero.

He borrowed heavily to buy the newspapers and had to sell his yacht and private plane to cover debts, and following the recent cancellation of his arbitrage award many of his assets have been seized. But to his fans, this is just another setback he will overcome. The man has been up and he has been down, but he is larger than life. He will find a way, he will be back. 
When and how?  Stay tuned for the next instalment.

POST CHARLIE - WHAT NOW?

This month France has made front-page news worldwide and left us with indelible images of the shocking terrorist attacks at Charlie Hebdo magazine and a kosher supermarket in Paris. Just as unforgettable was the subsequent show of solidarity and unity on city streets. Who has not seen the picture of dozens of world leaders marching arm-in-arm with President Hollande in Paris in defense of democratic values and in universal condemnation of religious fanaticism? Of course, we may question the motives of some participants with spotty human-rights records at home; the massive show of international support nevertheless served to give a much-needed boost to François Hollande's stature as president and of France's place in the wider world.

Unity march Paris, 1/11/2015

As terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, Daesh/ISIS or Boko Haram continue to hit with seeming impunity in Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Middle East and Western Africa, France has repeatedly suffered acts of Islamic terrorism at home, inflicted by its own radicalized citizens. The country is growing its own extremists and should take a hard look at the reasons why these French-born immigrants decide to wage war at home, for which they are trained in Syria or Yemen. To avenge a perceived disrespect to their Prophet Mohammed they have killed cartoonists, Jews, soldiers, and even little children in front of their Jewish school.

Within days of the huge solidarity march on January 11th, Prime Minister Manuel Valls admitted that there had been security lapses in France and announced the following immediate measures:  nearly 2700 new hires in the ministries of the Interior, Justice and Defense (including border control and increased intelligence exchange), with a three-year budget of €735 million. This includes 60 additional prison chaplains and five separate prison wings for holding radical islamists.

Manuel Valls before Parliament

In a rousing speech to Parliament, Valls reiterated that secularism (la laïcité) is a cornerstone of the French republic and that any attack on French Jews or Muslims is an attack on France itself. "We are at war against terrorism, jihadism and radicalism, not against Islam and Muslims," he said, adding that Islam, the country's second religion after Catholicism, "has its place in France."

It should be remembered that in 2013 France sent troops to Mali to push back the invasion of AQMI (Al Qaida au Maghreb Islamique) extremists who threatened to overrun the capital and impose sharia law. It has taken part in airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq, and stood ready to provide arms to Syrian opposition forces as part of an international coalition against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. At the last moment, the US withdrew from this coalition and the plan fell apart. Today the Charles De Gaulle, France's nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and largest war ship in Western Europe, is still cruising in Mediterranean waters, ready to deliver airstrikes against Islamic militants. This is undoubtedly one of the reasons why France is regularly threatened by jihadists.

The government's actions during and immediately following the January attacks have been applauded by both the left and the right, with François Hollande and Manuel Valls each gaining in the opinion polls. They re-emphasized the French republican values of Liberté, Egalité and Fraternité, as well as the principle of the secular state.

Nevertheless, the recent events have opened a debate about the theory that "religion has no place in state schools" and led to a growing demand for French schools to teach religious awareness in order to develop greater understanding between people of different religions, notably with regard to France's Islamic minority. Religious education is not officially banned from state schools − it can take place after school hours. Nearly 20 percent of French students attend subsidized private (mostly Catholic) schools, which are open to all faiths.

The typical profile of the Islamic jihadist in France is that of a French-born immigrant who grew up in the suburban housing projects with higher-than-average unemployment and a high crime rate, who is poorly integrated into the French mainstream, has few or no employment prospects, and becomes an easy target for radical Islamist recruiters. They join the Jihad, get sent to Iraq or Syria or Yemen for training, and return to France with a mission to avenge the Prophet.

Merah killed seven, including children

Manuel Valls has said that 1400 Muslims living in France have either joined or are planning to join the jihadist cause in the Middle East. With improved intelligence and increased resources, he hopes to hunt down and eradicate these extremist cells in France and to arrest returning radicals at their point of re-entry before they can go into action. Meanwhile, the country remains on high alert.

Fear has entered the national consciousness, as much of religious fanaticism as of the rise of the extreme-right National Front party of Marine Le Pen. French Muslims are fearful of retaliation; Jews have increased the protection of their synagogues and schools; Le Plan Vigipirate (highest alert) is still in place at airports, railroad stations and tourist sites, and public security forces have been reinforced by 30,000 soldiers "for as long as it takes" according to the Minister of Defense. The January 7 attacks have marked France as "9/11" has marked the United States and may have shaken up a certain complacency in this country known for its quality of life and a good bit of hedonism.

But life goes on. A nation-wide truckers' strike has entered its second week with no agreement in sight, the labor figures for December are in and show a continued rise in unemployment (up by 5.8 percent in 2014), Europe is nervous about the recent election of left-wing Alexis Tsipras as Prime Minister of Greece who wants to renegotiate the Greek debt (with potential consequences for Italy, Spain and Portugal), and so on.

Perhaps the old motto of CARPE DIEM is still our best guide. But with eyes and ears wide open.

CHARLIE HEBDO

If I were more computer-savvy this blog would be bordered in black today. As it is, the black borders remain virtual but the mourning does not as France is reeling from two attacks by Islamic extremists this week, leaving 17 dead and a number of wounded. Their targets were the satirical magazine CHARLIE HEBDO (a weekly named after Charlie Brown) and a kosher supermarket in Paris. 

Followed a three-day-long horror movie/cop show televised live in France.

In their well-planned attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine during the weekly editorial meeting on Wednesday with staff writers and five cartoonists around the table, two French-Algerian brothers, Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, killed ten and severely wounded four people and killed an additional two policemen outside, shouting "We have avenged the Prophet!" before making their getaway in a stolen car. In their flight from pursuing police they managed to ditch their car and commandeer another from a frightened driver, and to slip out of town. Put on high alert, police began to stop and search cars and the next day, at one such checkpoint in nearby Montrouge, a 26-year-old policewoman was shot and killed as she tried to pull over 32-year old Amedy Coulibaly, a French-born immigrant from Mali. Coulibaly and his female passenger got away.

On Friday, the police caught the fugitive brothers in their dragnet and trapped them in a printing plant in a small town north-east of Paris, where after a seven-hour standoff France's special anti-terrorist forces killed them in a shootout and liberated their lone hostage. That same Friday, Amedy Goulibaly walked into a Jewish supermarket in Paris where he took 16 people hostage, demanding the liberation of the Kouachi brothers with whom he appeared to have close ties and a shared radicalized belief in Islam. Before the day was over, he had killed four of his hostages and was killed himself when anti-terrorist police stormed the market. Four policemen were wounded in the operation.   

As the story of Wednesday's attack on Charlie Hebdo unfolded, a spontaneous reaction of outrage, grief and defiance drove thousands of people into the street where they gathered to honor the victims and demonstrate their support for the magazine and what it represented. These demonstrations have spread all over the country with large numbers of people gathering every night, carrying JE SUIS CHARLIE signs. Thousands of burning candles have been left in front of city halls throughout the country, and walls covered with messages, cartoons and pencils stuck into the cracks in the wall. It is as if all of France rose up as one, united in its condemnation of this murderous attack on freedom of speech.

Charlie Hebdo's covers may have been shocking, crude, offensive, or even blasphemous at times, their right to be so has never been questioned. Not only were they seen as a form of free speech, they also fulfilled a national craving since deep inside the French soul is a need to mock. Provocation is the name of the game and gets people's attention.

That provocation comes with risks. In 2004, Dutch filmmaker and provocateur Theo van Gogh was murdered by a young Dutch-Moroccan Islamic fundamentalist for having produced a short film that was considered offensive to Islam. The killer shot van Gogh, who had received threats but ignored them, as he bicycled to work in Amsterdam, and left a ranting Islamic message pinned to the body with a dagger. Charlie Hebdo also had received threats, and after its offices were firebombed in 2011 its editor, Stéphane Charbonnier, was given police protection. In an interview in front of his burned-out office, "Charb" (as he signed his cartoons) responded with the French children's expression Même Pas Peur to indicate he was not afraid at all and added an extra barb to his next cover by changing the name Charlie Hebdo to Charia Hebdo. He may have been pushing his luck, but his luck had never failed him. Until it did.

Editor Charbonnier in front of destroyed office

Convinced that satire and humor are the best weapons against a society's aberrations, Charlie Hebdo spared no one and heaped its irreverent criticism on politicians and religious leaders across the board, even when its cover cartoons sometimes got dangerously close to the edge. Cartoonists are very popular in France and those at Charlie Hebdo were considered the best. Restraining them would be seen as censorship and therefore unacceptable. Savaging the high and mighty is a national sport in France, and no one did it better than Charlie Hebdo.

Ten percent of France's citizens are Arab immigrants from the Maghreb countries, most of them practicing Islam. By and large this group is moderate and well integrated and in no way seen as a threat. They have made every effort to distance themselves from the extreme views of the militant Islamists whose fanaticism they strongly condemn.

French Jews, on the other hand, have been leaving France for Israel at twice the usual rate last year following a number of deadly anti-Semitic incidents, often perpetrated by young Arab immigrants. Peaceful coexistence between these two groups, as well as the new immigrants from Eastern Europe, is one of the challenges for today's political leaders, especially in times of high unemployment.

After the horrendous attacks of this week France remains jittery and on edge, but the fantastic show of unity and solidarity in its wake has reignited a sense of pride among the French and a strong determination to stick together in the face of terrorist threats and religious fanaticism. As my husband and I marched in Aix-en-Provence yesterday, waving our signs and chanting I AM CHARLIE in a massive chorus, we were immensely proud of France and its resolute rejection of crime in the name of religion, of terrorism in all its forms. All of diversified France was there, Muslim, Catholic, Jewish, but above all French, speaking with one voice for once.

In this country of human rights wrought from revolution, as its national anthem La Marseillaise
reminds us every day, today France was for all the world to see a country of LIBERTÉ, ÉGALITÉ, FRATERNITÉ and UNITÉ. It was beautiful.

Place de la République, January 11th

As for Charlie Hebdo, its survival seems assured. The next issue will come out on time, next Wednesday, with a print run of one million copies, and thousands of people have pledged to become new subscribers. The surviving Charlie staff have been welcomed and temporarily housed by the daily newspaper Libération while their offices are being repaired. On borrowed computers they are hard at work to create future issues worthy of their colleagues who died for the sake of free speech. Untold numbers of grateful Charlie followers stand behind them, whispering encouragement and support.

It took a tragedy to bring out the best:  an unforgettable image of a nation, joined by foreign leaders of all stripes, marching arm in arm in Paris in a united stand against fanaticism and terrorism.
It's Charlie's legacy - may it live forever.

MINOR NEWS FROM FRANCE; MERRY CHRISTMAS

OLIVE CRISIS  

This weekend's Olive Festival in Aix, when the area's olive mill owners introduce their new millésime AOP (Appellation d'Origine Protégée), was decidedly less festive than in previous years. The reason was simple:  excessive late rains and an infestation by the feared olive fly, a parasite that bores into the olive and makes it fall off the tree prematurely, have decimated the olive oil production this year. Between 70 and 80 percent of olives were infested and unfit for consumption, and the small quantity of available oil was sold in smaller containers and sometimes even rationed among customers of this annual fair. Very few 5-liter containers (we buy three of those) were to be found, and for the first time ever we had to spread our 15-liter purchase over three different producers. 

ECONOMIC NEWS

Under pressure from the European Commission in Brussels to reduce its deficit, the French government has begun selling stakes in public assets in hopes of raising €4 billion in the next two years. Last week, it sold 49.9 percent of Toulouse-Blagnac Airport to a Chinese consortium for €308 million. Discussions are underway to reach similar deals for the airports of Nice and Lyons.

The airport sale to China has raised some security concerns, especially since aeronautical giant Airbus Group is located at Toulouse Airport. Earlier this year, China bought 14% of French carmaker Peugeot.

Emmanuel Macron

To avoid EU sanctions for not having effected enough reforms this year, France's Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron last week proposed a "basket" of new laws to stimulate the economy and create employment. It contained, among others, a bill to open up certain regulated professions to competition, and another one to allow shops to open 12 Sundays per year instead of the current five. The latter proposal, to be discussed in Parliament in January 2015, ran into immediate opposition from Martine Aubrey, former Leader of the Socialist Party, who called it a "regression" and vowed to vote against the new law. Prime Minister Manuel Valls's response that "everything is open for discussion" indicates that even this timid effort at removing some business restrictions will probably be watered down. Macron, who has often criticized the 35-hour workweek, did not include this hot potato in his basket.

Finally, credit rating agency Fitch has just downgraded France's rating from AA+ to AA, judging that the government's efforts to cut its deficit are not good enough. Last October, Standard & Poor had similarly downgraded France's credit, quoting the poor outlook for the country's economy in the next two years.

GLOBAL WARMING

The next Climate Summit will be held in Paris in December 2015. In view of the meager results obtained at the UN Climate Conference in Lima earlier this month, which left most contentious issues unresolved, much work remains to be done to pave the way to successful negotiations and a potential global climate deal in Paris next year. And the French government would be setting a bad example if it did not make a serious effort to reduce its air pollution on home ground, particularly in Paris and Ile de France, where dangerously high levels of fine-particle air pollution were recorded several times this year (blog 3/17/14).

Mayor Anne Hidalgo

As a first significant anti-pollution response, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo declared last week that diesel-engine cars, known to be the worst polluters, would no longer be allowed in Paris from 2020 on. She plans to promote and increase public (clean) transportation, create more pedestrian-only areas in the center, increase the number of city-owned rental bicycles and double the dedicated cycling lanes, reduce the speed limit within the city to 30 km/hr, and ban diesel-driven delivery trucks from the city as early as 2017. It is an ambitious program that will no doubt face many obstacles, but then - what is easy in France?

Remember the regrettable decision by Ecology Minister Ségolène Royal who last summer decided to do away with the Ecotax (blog 6/30/14), an anti-pollution tax levied on heavy trucks traversing France? This tax was meant to finance eco-friendly means of transportation (rail and river transport, extended metro and tram lines, a new fleet of "clean" buses). Ms. Royal decided that the loss of Ecotax revenues could be (partly) offset by new taxes to be levied on the highway companies that are getting "unduly rich" on toll revenues. Notably absent from this reasoning is the issue of air pollution.

If you were baffled by the elimination of the Ecotax, as I was, Ms. Royal has surprised us again when she declared a week ago that she would invalidate the recent prefectorial decision to outlaw wood-burning open fireplaces in greater Paris from January 2015 on. She found the measure "excessive" and called it "punitive ecology". According to environmental experts, open fireplaces release as many toxic fine particles into the ambient air (23%) as car exhausts. Ms. Royal disputes this figure but wishes to promote the use of wood ("France's surface consists for 30 percent of forest") as an excellent heating fuel, especially when it is burned in an energy-efficient closed space such as a stove or a fireplace insert. If wood-burning fireplaces are not the principal source of heating but serve only a recreational purpose, she sees no reason to outlaw them. And her wood-as-fuel argument seems a valid one. Yet, undoing a prefectorial decision based on public health considerations just weeks before it was to go into effect seems rather dictatorial and calls into question her tolerance of avoidable pollution, however minor, especially as Minister of the Environment. It is after all those very same fine particles that have repeatedly exceeded the established safety levels this year and caused serious problems.

LV FOUNDATION IN PARIS

I recently visited the Frank Gehry-designed Louis Vuitton Foundation museum in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, which was officially opened on October 28th with a concert by pianist Lang-Lang in its auditorium. The stunning building, shaped like a boat with billowing glass sails, houses the private contemporary art collection of Bernard Arnault, France's richest man and owner of the luxury conglomerate LVMH. The twelve giant sails, reflected in an adjacent pool, are made of a new purpose-built glass invented and fabricated by St. Gobain Group in France. They cover and interconnect four levels of indoor galleries and outdoor terraces, and give an air of floating lightness to the large structure. Although equipped with the latest technical advances, I noted with some glee that the main elevator was out of order at the time of my visit. Perhaps just to keep us grounded amidst all this space-age technology.

The art displayed inside is completely overshadowed by the building. In fact, the building IS the work of art and in its strange diversity of shape and form must be toured inside and out. Its setting on the edge of the Jardin d'Acclimatation allows for a walk around the entire site and a near-transparent view from many an angle, even seated from one of the park's benches. Expect a Vaut le Détour listing in the next Paris tourist guide. 

TRIERWEILER

Trierweiler signing in Aix

Last Saturday, Valérie Trierweiler came to Aix-en-Provence to sign her book Merci pour ce Moment, the account of her relationship with President François Hollande. Published in early September, the book has been widely criticized and the author vilified for washing her dirty laundry in public. In France, a philandering husband (or partner) is nothing exceptional and often accepted as a fact of life. Take it or leave it. Had the break-up not been so public it would have been greeted with a yawn. But it was, and the whole world shared in it. Today, it appears that the fascination continues, judging by the huge crowd of buyers, book in hand, lined up at the bookstore where VT was appearing. Some in the (mostly female) crowd carried several copies; Christmas gifts no doubt.

Even the local press got excited and the next day published a huge photo of VT on the front page of the newspaper La Provence, and a half-page article on page 2 with another large photo of the author. One woman waiting to have the book signed was quoted as saying: "This is for all the betrayed women". Perhaps that explains its success? To date, 700,000 copies have been sold.

CHRISTMAS

Detail of a Provençal crèche

And suddenly, Christmas is upon us. A large Crèche peopled with Santons has been installed on the Cours Mirabeau, famous chefs are preparing Christmas dinners on television, the rush is on for foie gras, truffles and champagne, and I better get my own house in order and get busy. 

But not before wishing you happy holidays with my glittering Christmas car(d). 

May your bulbs never dim and burn bright forever! 

MERRY CHRISTMAS

JOYEUX NOËL

PRETTIGE KERSTDAGEN

FELICES FIESTAS