Christmas in Provence

I just came back from my Christmas Holidays in France where I visited my family. They live in the south east of France , that we call LA PROVENCE.
This year the weather was perfect, sunny and warm.

The tradition in Provence is to have Thirteen Desserts after a light meal on Christmas eve.
Why thirteen ?? It represents Jesus Christ and the 12 apostles at the last supper.
In my family we like so much sweets that usually we have more than thirteen.

The thirteen desserts inlcude:
- Fresh fruit (tangerines, grapes, winter melon)
- Nuts and dried fruits (almonds, walnuts, dried figs, dates)
- Sweets

The list of the sweets is long:
- Pate de coing (quince paste)
- Nougat (hard candy made with honey and almonds)
- Pompe a l'huile (brioche made with orange flower water and olive oil)
- Calissons d'Aix en Provence (marzipan with sugar icing)
- Chocolate christmas buche
- Pain d'epice

My grand parents make every year the nougat, the quince paste and the christmas buche. It is so good . Everything tastes better when it is homemade !!!
Here is a video showing my granpa making the nougat: 
"Le Temps du Nougat" by my talented brother Florent Conti.  
  
My brother and I we live in North America and my sister lives in Austria. So this year my mom baked some gingerbread cookies and a Sachertorte (Viennese chocolate cake) to represent the countries where we live.

We set up a nice table on Christmas eve and the food remain on the table until the end of december. But we are so "glutton" that the day after Christmas, everything was gone.