Everyday French – Ep.9 : l'épiphanie, c'est quoi ?

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Hello everyone and welcome to this ninth episode of Everyday French, a podcast to help you listen to natural French. Just a reminder that in the description you'll find the transcript of what I'm saying if it's too difficult for you.

Today we're going to talk… well, today, we're going to talk about January 6th, because it's a special date in France, and I decided to talk to you about it.

Let's go!

So today is January 6th, it's Epiphany. What is Epiphany? Well, it's a day we like — not really to celebrate, but it's a fairly important day in our culture. Because according to tradition, it's the day the Three Wise Men — the kings — from the East went to see Jesus Christ. Because Jesus Christ, remember, was born on December 25th, well actually during the night between the 24th and the 25th. And so they set off to meet him in Jerusalem, they went to offer him three gifts, but I don't remember exactly what they were. Anyway, in our tradition, it's the day we eat the "galette des rois," a cake inspired by this tradition. So in France we have two kinds of galette des rois: one is a bit like a brioche, shaped like a donut, a really big donut. It has a fairly neutral taste, and we generally like to dip this cake in coffee, because the cake is a bit dry, you see, it's a bit like a brioche, so dipping it in a bit of coffee is nice, or also a bit of hot chocolate — yeah, it's hot chocolate season in January.

Otherwise we have a second cake made with frangipane — frangipane is a mix of almonds with a kind of cream, it's a very rich dough, a little bit fatty. But it gives the cake a nutty flavor, actually, and it's pretty good. So you eat either the first, donut-shaped cake, or the frangipane one — either way, the point of this cake is to hide a little charm, a "fève," inside — a fève is a little object hidden in the galette. And the goal, of course, is to cut the cake without hitting the fève — I mean, without the knife hitting it. The goal is to cut lots of slices and for everyone to take one. The person who gets the fève in their slice becomes king or queen — actually, if you're in France, you'll notice that in the boxes sold with the cake, there's a paper crown inside for whoever finds the fève. The person who finds the fève, well, their forfeit is normally to buy the next galette for next time. So normally, tradition says you eat the galette des rois on January 6th, but in reality people start eating this cake from late December all the way to the end of January. There's no real rule, you can eat it at any time, even any time of day, no problem. The main point is really to share it with other people — it's a bit sad if you buy a galette des rois just for yourself and eat it alone.

There are also people who collect the fèves, because there are all sorts of different fèves nowadays — you've got Marvel fèves, Asterix and Obelix fèves. There's really a whole range of things, and some people like to keep the fèves and build up a little collection.

So there you go, today is January 6th, it's Epiphany, the day we'll eat the galette des rois. Have you ever tasted this cake? Do you want to try it?

Feel free to tell me in the comments, and I'll see you next week for a new episode.

See you soon!

Aurélie from Everyday French