“The Christmas Song” tops the charts every December, but there’s lots more to know about those chestnuts roasting on an open fire. We peel back the layers in this essay, which is one of our two contributions to this year’s Advent Botany holiday collection.

I first tried chestnuts when I was a student in Paris. The holiday season was peaceful that year, as it should be, and I’ve cherished my memories of it all the more as intense protests are spreading through France, and violence has shattered a Christmas market in Strasbourg. In that long-ago December, though, my most consuming emotion was a kind of double nostalgia. I missed home, and yet I wasn’t quite ready to leave that beautiful city behind. As I walked for hours and hours gathering last looks, it was thrilling to get caught up in the sudden early darkness of winter and the elaborate holiday windows of the grand old department stores. During one evening promenade, I saw a street merchant who had anchored himself in the middle of the streaming agitated crowd and was patiently tending a pan of marrons grillés, freshly roasted chestnuts. The scene was so sepia toned, so achingly 19th century, that I had to have some, just to glut my sentimentality. I bought a newspaper cone of the hot aromatic nuts and managed to peel one with my cold fingers right there on the sidewalk. Continue reading →