Yesterday was a crap day in my hometown, and what I do after crap days is I find something wonderful to share with everybody, partly so that if somebody needs a break from sad news they have it, and also to counter-program the chaos in a small way. So in this difficult time, I’m choosing a song from one of my favorite times in 2024.
In late August my family and I took a vacation to Canada, our first international trip ever. In Toronto, we saw a Chinatown festival and the Hockey Hall of Fame; in Ottawa we saw Parliament Hill and ate at the very first stand for those amazing sugary pastries called BeaverTails; later we would head to Montreal and see, among other attractions, something called the Barbie Expo. We also took a train east to Quebec City, which is where this story takes place.
During the summer the city puts on a series of events called Les Grands Feux Loto-Québec, a sort of riverfront get-together with food trucks and drinks and music and, once it’s dark enough, a fireworks show over the St. Lawrence River. Each fireworks show has a different theme, and the night I was there the theme was Noël d’été, Summer Christmas.
Everybody in my crew had been on a train most of the day and they mostly just wanted to get to bed early, but I decided I couldn’t pass it up and walked from our Centre-ville hotel to Old Quebec, past fountains, past cat cafes, past cathedrals and murals, past the famous Chateau Frontenac, down to the waterfront. People were hanging out, having drinks, playing with their kids (it was like 10pm, but there were lots of kids), enjoying the atmosphere. And then the DJ shut off the dance music and put on a mix of holiday songs.
The Summer Christmas were solid; the fireworks were all festive reds, greens and golds, and they looked great over the water. (You can apparently sign up for fireworks cruises during these events if you want to see the show from the water.) This was Quebec, of course, so I expected bilingual holiday music, but at one point they played “Feliz Navidad” by Jose Feliciano so actually it was trilingual. It was lively and fun and worked very well with the fireworks show.
The song that caught my ear the most was what I thought was a French-language “Jingle Bells,” but when I looked it up, I learned “Vive le vent” is actually a distinct set of lyrics. Both songs celebrate having fun in winter, and both have unforgettable choruses – in the case of “Vive le vent,” the last line translates to something like “Snowballs and New Year’s Day and happy new year Grandma!”
Now until that night, I’d have told you that Christmas feels like Christmas when I’m at home with my loved ones in December, rather than, say, hundreds or thousands of strangers in August in another country. But when that music hit, and I looked around at all these friendly, festive people having a great time together, with the sky lighting up around us, I realized there was so much joy going on around me that, honestly, it really did feel like Christmas.
It only lasted twenty minutes, but it was a pretty fantastic twenty minutes, and instantly turned Quebec into one of my favorite cities. (And that was before I spent the next afternoon at Le Musée de la civilisation exploring an exhibit about pro wrestling!) Would I go back for another Noël d’été? Oui. I may even learn the words to “Vive le vent” before I do, so I can sing along nice and loud, and maybe send new year’s wishes to any grandmas I encounter.