Bonjour, Friends!

Paris in December always feels like it's trying on two costumes at once. There's the grand, theatrical version; the department store windows, dressed to the nines in a tradition that goes back generations, sparkling like a thousand tiny Broadway stages. And then there's the smaller, more improvised Paris that I love the most.

This week, we landed squarely in that second Paris.

We were up at La Villette doing the usual four-year-old circuit: Playground, snack, and the ongoing negotiations about why we can't actually move (take up residence) into the Playground with the giant dragon slide. "But it’d be so cool. I could slide to school in the morning!"

On the walk toward the canal, I spotted a Josephine Baker display: eleven paintings by Catel at Le Hall de la Chanson. As a fan of Baker, not just the performer, but the WWII resistance hero, I had to stop and take a closer look. There are few things more “Paris” than a foreign-born icon, once considered an outsider, now woven into the city’s architecture.

On our bike ride home, we stopped to watch people crewing in the canal. Before I realized what was happening, we were in life jackets, climbing into a Zodiac with the dock manager. It was an entirely new perspective, seeing Paris from the canal after spending so much time on its banks or bridges.

The city is fully in holiday mode now. The department store windows are dressed, the Christmas markets are humming, but this week, my Paris was a four-year-old in a Zodiac and Josephine Baker on a wall in La Villette.

➡️ What to do in Paris this December: HiP Paris details December's packed calendar from Lost in Frenchlation's English-subtitled French films with director Q&As to the massive Salon du Cheval horse fair with 500 horses and pony rides for kids.

➡️ Bûche de Noël: The Best Yule Logs in Paris 2025: Bonjour Paris uncovers 2025's top bûche de Noël creations from stars like Alain Ducasse's chocolate sleigh and Yannick Alléno's charred-wood inspired sculpture, tracing roots to ancient Celtic log-burning rituals.

➡️ Your Guide to Paris - NYT: New York Times interactive guide navigates first-time visitors through Paris's 20 arrondissements with neighborhood breakdowns, hidden gems like Brasserie Lipp's lifelong waiters, and tips for terrace culture plus canal cruises.

➡️ Anthony Bourdain Once Said This Restaurant in Paris Was a Must: Food & Wine tests Anthony Bourdain's top Paris pick, Le Dome Café, devouring its massive seafood platter and confirming classic bistro excellence endures nearly 20 years on.

➡️ The most inspiring art exhibitions in Paris for December 2025: Condé Nast Traveller highlights December 2025's top Paris exhibitions, like Art Deco's centenary (Orient Express carriages), Gerhard Richter at Fondation Louis Vuitton, and Minimalism at Bourse de Commerce.

Standing in front of the Galeries Lafayette windows last night, my son on my shoulders, I watched a crowd do something rare these days: gather in one place and actually look at the same thing. No phones out (well, mostly). Just families, couples, clusters of friends, all locked on the display. It felt like slipping into a photograph from 1955. Paris is holding onto something from before the world went fractal.

These windows aren't new. Printemps kicked off the tradition in 1911 with simple scenes of everyday life, but it was the post-WWI boom that turned them into a spectacle.

Galeries Lafayette went full surrealist: floating angels, mechanical villages, entire worlds crammed into glass boxes.

Through the Depression, the Occupation, the strikes of '68, they kept going. Not just commerce, but a city's way of saying, "We're still here, still dreaming in public." Aristide Boucicaut, who built Bon Marché into an empire, called them "poetry in merchandise." He wasn't wrong.

What hits me now, though, is how they pull off a pre-smartphone magic. Before everyone had a pocket theater, people would crowd these streets for the shared gaze. One spectacle, one conversation.

Cafés full of tables where a group argued over Sartre or the latest scandal, eyes locked, no notifications pinging. Attention was a collective act.

These days, we're all in the same place but siloed, scrolling, swiping, heads down in our private feeds. Paris fights it, though. I still see young groups in cafés, laughing over nothing, phones forgotten. And yesterday, multiple families at those Lafayette windows, kids pointing, parents nodding, all tuned to the same light show.

It's not nostalgia for a "better time," just noticing how these windows, and the crowds they draw, remind us what focus used to feel like. Paris at Christmas isn't selling products so much as that old communal trance.

Being at the Louvre at night, especially in these colder months when the crowds thin out, feels grander than it does during the day or busy hours. I'm always stunned that I can feel so alone in this massive, beautiful space.

One thing I love about photographing Paris after dark is the aloneness, the deep peace this busy city hands over once the sun drops.

I framed this one through the entrance gates, soft edges pulling focus to the doorway itself. It's about that feeling of arriving at a gateway, invited through, somewhat blind to the full view on the other side, but with just enough hint of the pyramid's glow to promise wonderment.

Corsican crooner who owned Paris in the '40s, Tino Rossi, drops the ultimate French holiday swing.

A kid's cheeky letter to Papa Noël: promises to be good if Santa delivers the bike, doll, sled, and storybook. Pure post-war hope.