An Ewok Epiphany.

If you have kids in school here, you probably know that Epiphany is big. Really big. On January 6, kids would tell you it’s bigger than Christmas. Of course, twelve days earlier, they would tell you that Christmas is more important. Kids are such liars. In any event, Epiphany is the day that the Magi visited Jesus and is celebrated in France with a special cake called a galette des rois.

The Galette

The galette des rois is made with pastry dough filled with frangipane, which is an almond paste. The cake tastes very good. If they didn’t cost eight euros a pop, I would eat 36,000 of them. Inside the frangipane is a small ceramic figurine, just large enough to break a tooth on. This is called a fève because it used to be a bean. Now it’s ceramic and an awful lot of French people break their teeth on them and then collect them. You can buy glass curio cabinets specifically designed to hold your fève collection on your living room wall. Kind of like how I display my Pulitzer and my three Emmys.

The galette des rois also comes with a paper crown. The lucky person who bites into the fève gets to wear the crown and is the king or queen. King or queen of broken teeth, but king or queen nonetheless.

The Children’s Book

Anyway, in the écoles maternelles, kids spend the entire month of January learning about and celebrating Epiphany. The main activity, other than eating too many galettes, is the very well-known and well-loved children’s story, “Roule Galette”. This is the story of a galette who, after being set out on the windowsill to cool after being baked, gets bored and decides to go run around the forest. She encounters a series of animals who want to eat her, but tricks them with a song about how fast she can run. Finally she encounters a fox and is, well, outfoxed. The fox pretends not to be able to hear the galette’s song and keeps asking her to come closer. And finally, the galette gets too close and is eaten.

School children spend the month of January learning the galette’s song and do graphisme exercises, tracing the trail of the galette through the woods. My son’s cahier has ten pages dedicated to Roule Galette-themed exercises, including one where he had to glue pictures of the different animals in the story in order of their appearance. My kids have this story memorized. They have also learned how to make a galette and how to eat one without breaking a tooth or choking on the fève. My son has been lucky enough to have been crowned king every year since 2003. Perhaps I should have already bought him a collector’s cabinet for all of the fèves that he didn’t swallow.

The galettes dominate the boulangeries and the grandes surfaces starting in December and lasting throughout January and sometimes even into February. It gets to be a bit much. How many cakes can the French actually eat? Well, now that smoking has been banned everywhere except your own bathroom, I suspect that this January will see a spike in cake sales. Unsubstantiated internet rumor has it that the fèves contain nicotine. Yes, I just started that rumor. Now you see how I got my Pulitzer. I mean my Pulitzers.

Carrefour Commercialism

Last year I felt like a stuffy old conservative French person when Carrefour started selling “Pirates of the Caribbean” galettes des rois. I’ve been a Johnny Depp fan since I was a little girl and fell in love with Edward Scissorhands, but a Captain Jack Sparrow fève is too much commercialism for me to handle. Can they Americanize a holiday that we don't even celebrate? Can’t we return to our roots, people, and go back to the simple bean? Besides, I just can’t picture Keira Knightly stuffing her face with a fork full of frangipane.

So last week when I went to Carrefour to buy groceries and I saw a huge display of Star Wars galettes des rois and collector’s edition fève sets, I burst into laughter.

The largest fève, naturally, is Darth Vader. Luke, I am your fèver, I could hear him say. But it wasn’t just the thought of James Earl Jones lending his voice to a tiny ceramic fève. It was the more profoundly disjointed presence of Star Wars characters wrapped around a Three Kings’ cake.

For many people, Star Wars is its own religion. We know that Star Wars and earthly religious holidays don’t mix. Have you seen the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special? It ran on CBS once and never again. (But you can find enough clips on YouTube to make you think that perhaps Harrison Ford has made some bad decisions in life). I think they burned all the original the tapes. It’s truly terrible and proves that Wookie Life Day and human Christmas don’t mix, even with hallucinogenic candles and Princess Leia singing.

But of course I bought a Star Wars galette des rois. I may be turned off by the consumerism, but I want me a Boba Fett fève! Unfortunately, as you can see from the above photo, it wasn’t Boba Fett. It was one of those stupid little Ewoks. May as well have been Jar-Jar.

So happy Epiphany everybody. But more importantly, happy Wookie Life Day.