Bonfires Help Santa Claus Find Way Cajun Christmas Includes Landing Lights For Papa Noel

Some things, you do just because your daddy did.

In Paulina, in Gramercy, in Lutcher and in a dozen other little towns that line the banks of the Mississippi River, much of life is not learned in school or even in the Catholic and Baptist churches that seem to appear every other mile along the River Road. Some things, say the people who live here, you know from the cradle and act accordingly.

You know that just because the sign outside LeBlanc’s store in Paulina says he sells “HOT BOUDIN,” does not mean that there is actually any sausage inside.

It sells out by 4 p.m. You know that the “HOGSHEAD CHEESE” has nothing to do with cheddar, but is a congealed pork product made from unspeakable parts.

And even as a child you know that Papa Noel, whom some people call Santa Claus, cannot possibly find his way into this dark, swampy pocket of the earth unless you light a big fire, many big fires, to help him find his way.

In a time when their Cajun accents seem to grow fainter with every generation, when the French and German their forebears spoke is all but forgotten, Christmas Eve bonfires are still burning bright in the River Parishes, small towns and wide places in the road between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

It is a tradition older than the community itself, believed to have been carried here by settlers more than 200 years ago.

There is some disagreement between people here as to whether it began as a beacon for Papa Noel or just to light the way for travelers on the river to midnight Mass, but over the years the lore has made it either or both, and the argument is unimportant. What is important is that it survived, said aged and young people alike.

“We just grew up doing it,” said 15-year-old Mike Minvielle, as he and a friend, 16-year-old Heath LeBlanc, labored in a cold wind to finish one of many bonfires on the levee in Paulina. “This one is 20 feet. We used to build ‘em 40 feet, but one fell on somebody so now we can only build ‘em 20 feet.”

It is one of the more unusual and, in some ways, puzzling of America’s Christmas traditions. These bonfires are not just piles of refuse and splinters that someone sets ablaze, but rather carefully constructed teepee-shaped towers - built around a frame of willow and covered with cane reed. It takes as long as a month to do it right, and most families begin work on Thanksgiving.

Then, about 7 p.m. on Christmas Eve, when it is good and dark in the low country, the families will douse them with diesel fuel, toss in a match and, for miles and miles, light up the riverfront with the glow of 100, maybe even 200 bonfires.

When the fire gets going, the cane reed will begin to pop and shoot sparks into the air, “like shooting stars,” said Guy Poche, whose family has been building them for all of his 60-some-odd years, and for generations before that.

“It is a sight to see,” he said.

But people do not just sit around and watch them burn. They dish up steaming bowls of gumbo and plates of jambalaya, and wander from fire to fire and house to house, being neighborly. Sometimes, if they are not too close to a church, they pop the top on beers and toast everyone from Papa Noel to Huey Long.

Grandmothers tell children the story of “the gator that stole Christmas,” and someone always sings “Silent Night.”

The fires will burn until midnight, plenty of time, say the older folks here, for Papa Noel to locate the chimneys of their grandchildren.

Then, when the bonfires are down to embers, thousands of people will break away for midnight Mass.

“The old people just get older, that’s a fact,” said Poche. “But it doesn’t have to end with us. The young people save it.”