>> Major funding provided by... >> Isn't that beautiful?

The St. Louis Cathedral in the historic French Quarter.

It's sort of the epicenter of Christmas here in New Orleans.

I'm Raymond Arroyo, and as a native New Orleanian, there's nowhere else I would rather be during the holidays than right here.

The music, the food, the sights, the sounds of New Orleans are never better than at Christmastime.

New Orleans is really all about her people, some of whom you will meet shortly.

So, join us for a unique celebration of song, cuisine, and a city that makes it all possible.

Welcome to "Christmastime in New Orleans."

♪ ♪ Music.

That special rhythm is the heartbeat of this city, the birthplace of jazz -- particularly during Christmas.

At the Saenger Theatre downtown, some of New Orleans' finest musicians assemble for a rehearsal.

The NOLA Players are a supergroup of hometown talent with long ties to the city.

They will record and perform new arrangements of Christmas classics with a Big Easy vibe.

>> I would say that the music itself has the elements of New Orleans.

I think with New Orleans, which has its own tempos, the groove, and the community of musicians playing together.

>> Jason Marsalis is the percussionist for the NOLA Players -- and a member of the famed Marsalis family of jazz.

>> New Orleans -- it has its own sort of holidays that they celebrate anyway, whether you're talking about Mardi Gras or whether you're talking about Jazz Fest or even if you're talking New Orleans Saints football.

There's annual things that the city does, and so Christmas, there's its own traditions that New Orleans has, like Christmas in the Oaks.

So I think that New Orleans will put its own spin on something, even if it's an ordinary thing that everybody does.

It'll have its own spin on it, and that's what this record has.

>> Mike and I grew up together.

>> Really?

>> It's like home.

It's like brothers from a different mother.

>> You've played with Roland here before.

>> I've played with Roland for 30 years.

Yeah.

It's very natural.

We can predict where, you know, what the conversation is going musically.

So it's very comfortable.

>> Tell me what Christmastime means to you as a native New Orleanian.

>> Family.

Doesn't necessarily mean cold.

But it means family.

It means friends.

It's a big portion of what happens normally in a concentrated period of time.

♪ ♪ >> At this time of year, everyone feels the call of home -- something actor Wendell Pierce, a native New Orleanian, is experiencing.

>> What draws me home is I was blessed to have been born in the northernmost Caribbean city, the last Bohemia.

The best example of the American aesthetic on display of how we have taken the individual and lifted them up to a place of celebration, freedom within form.

That's exhibited in New Orleans in its architecture.

It's exhibited in its food, where we take a little something of nothing and build it up to this great culinary masterpiece called gumbo, known around the world.

That's the philosophical reason I come back to New Orleans.

The spiritual reason is the love of family, the love of friends.

They keep you humble.

That's why jazz was created here.

It's freedom within form, in spite of restraint, in spite of the difficulties that I have, that I will find my joy in what I'm doing, and that's my music, the creativity and the inspiration that I find.

>> Connectedness to this place and its history is important to New Orleanians.

Given Wendell Pierce's success on Broadway, the big screen, and on HBO's "Treme," one could understand his moving on.

But Pierce maintains a home here, never forgetting his roots or the roots of the city he loves.

So, tell me about -- This is -- This is one of the few public art schools in the country.

>> It's one of the best.

This is the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts.

Young artists of all disciplines can come here and train, and it is the school that Wynton Marsalis, Harry Connick Jr. went to.

Jon Batiste.

>> Wendell Pierce.

>> Wendell Pierce.

>> And Raymond Arroyo.

>> And Raymond Arroyo.

[ Laughter ] >> The New Orleans Center for Creative Arts recently added a culinary school called Press Street Station, which has its own historical significance.

>> Press Street Station is literally the Press Street station where Homer Plessy bought his ticket to get on the trains, changed, and challenged the American value system.

>> Pierce would like to see a museum here to commemorate the spot where Plessy challenged the segregation statutes imposed on African-Americans.

>> What I love about New Orleans is it's a living history.

We understand and we know where we came from, so we have a sense of what's important and what our value systems are.

New Orleans at Christmastime, it's friends and family, but there is another "F" -- food.

[ Laughs ] So that's another reason I keep coming back home.

>> Now, in other places, you eat to live.

Here, we live to eat.

There are now more than 50% more restaurants in the city than before Hurricane Katrina struck.

We keep time with our food.

We use it to celebrate those great occasions.

In the heart of the French Quarter, Louisiana's culinary ambassador to the world, Chef John Folse, commemorates the mingling of cultures that gave us this unique cuisine at his Restaurant R'evolution.

>> This is Storyville.

This is the room that tells a story of the cultures that came to Louisiana.

We begin with the Native Americans, who were here 2,000 years before Christ.

They were cooking in Louisiana.

They welcomed the French, who arrived here in the 1600s.

It was the Spanish, who took Louisiana from France in 1760, that really turned the city into wrought iron and fountains and beautiful, beautiful terrazzo floors.

And then, of course, the Germans, my groups, arrives here in the 1720s, 1730s.

They're the farmers.

They're the butchers.

They're the ones who bring the bonfire, the Christmas traditions, the Christmas trees, the wreaths, all the things that we associate with the holidays.

After them, of course, we have the English arriving in 1770, leaving New England with our War of Independence.

And then finally, the Italians arriving right after the Civil War, bringing with them again families who wanted to make good.

And then the Africans, freed from slavery with the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865.

They're the last of the Creole nations.

No other city ever, in the history of this world, has seven distinct nations coming together to create what we call the mixture, theCreoles,the Creoles of New Orleans.

Forget about it.

There's nothing like it.

>> In his restaurant, Chef Folse teaches me the Creole way to prepare a Christmas goose for a traditional Réveillon dinner, starting with salting the bird inside and out.

You get the hands in.

I noticed that.

It's an intimate relationship with your Christmas goose.

>> Well, this is Cajun cooking.

Absolutely.

A little bit paprika just to enhance the color as it cooks.

Now I'm going to do the same thing on the inside of the goose.

>> Then it's on to the stuffing with some traditional ingredients.

Wow, a whole garlic, really, chopped.

>> A whole garlic.

Carrots for sweetness right there.

Celery.

This is normally referred to the as the trinity, right?

All of the onions, the celery, and all of that is going to go into it.

Now, of course, the only thing I have to do now is put the citrus in.

>> Okay, I want you to tell us about these Réveillon dinners.

>> The Réveillon means "awakening," and you want to remember that in the early French traditions or European traditions, you could not go to communion in a Catholic church without fasting.

Well, in the early days of Louisiana's history, that tradition was there.

So, you'd cook your Christmas dinners, your Christmas Eve dinners and your New Year's Eve dinners, all day, but once you hit midnight, you couldn't eat.

So everybody had to fast to go to midnight mass.

We knew that after mass, we'd be coming back to the awakening, the ability to eat these grand feasts that had been cooked all day long.

So we try to keep that tradition alive in New Orleans.

>> Once we tie the legs of the stuffed goose, Chef Folse floats an irresistible offer.

>> So, today I wanted to lay out that Réveillon dinner that I'm serving at my home for Réveillon so you can see the whole presentation in front of my beautiful fires.

>> Let's go to that traditional house and see how this was done really at the turn of the century.

>> Oh, you're going to see something really interesting here, one of my favorite places.

Let's go.

>> Can't wait.

>> Bring the goose.

>> All right.

We'll bring it.

♪ We head to the historic Hermann-Grima house in the French Quarter.

Inside the detached Creole kitchen, the fire burns as bright as the tradition on display.

>> This is the classic Creole Réveillon table.

Not only this but the fireplace behind you with the two beautiful pots of gumbo z'herbes.

And of course that wonderful corn maque choux.

That's a gift from the Native American Indians.

So the whole cultures of Louisiana are sitting right here on the table.

>> In the 1700s, oysters were so plentiful here that the French and Germans devised new ways to use them -- oyster stew and padded shells.

>> Look at that gorgeous oyster stew.

I told you I never go to a party without bringing it.

The candied yams that are just cooked in sugar.

We're a sugar society here.

The cane fields of Louisiana provide all the sweetness for the beautiful yams.

Oysters are in season, and the hen house and the butcheries are done to get the hams right at the right time of year.

The swamps are teeming with game.

>> Even the desserts are steeped in history.

These have been served here for 300 years.

>> Coconut cake, of course, the traditional wedding cake of Louisiana.

Iles flottantes, the floating isles.

The fruitcakes of Germany.

And then, of course, the ratafia, the ratification of fruit of the swamps of Louisiana, with brandy of France.

This is absolutely the jazz of food.

>> And incidentally, I think all that stuff is connected.

You know, I mean, you wouldn't have the music without the food.

>> NOLA Players arranger Mike Ensenat sees the same fusion of cultures at play in his own arrangements.

>> Well, you have great material.

I mean, these tunes are tried and true.

I try to tap into a lot of the rhythmic aspect of the city using that, what we would call a street beat, but it's actually sort of a Latin habanera rhythm that infiltrated New Orleans way back, but that second-line sort of groove that you'll -- you'll hear in some of those arrangements.

When you talk about those influences -- with the French, you have so much of the impressionistic harmony that, you know, Debussy and Ravel brought to the table.

And then you add the rhythmic elements of the African kind of contribution and the Caribbean and also the rhythmic elements of the Spanish.

It's already kind of blended into jazz, which I just brought into the arrangements.

♪ >> Back at the Saenger Theatre, Mike and the NOLA Players take the stage for their first performance.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> One woman who has been telling it like it is for decades is Leah Chase.

At 93, she is still in Treme, cooking her famous gumbo and fried chicken as she has for 70 years.

The winner of the James Beard Lifetime Achievement Award, Leah is the proprietor and chef at Dooky Chase.

>> You know, it used to be a meeting place, and I feel that, in some ways, we changed the course of America right in here.

>> Duke Ellington, Rosa Parks, several presidents, and Martin Luther King all ate within these walls.

>> Everybody would meet here over a bowl of gumbo.

Just have gumbo and fried chicken.

>> Today, Leah Chase is the undisputed queen of Creole cooking.

>> Now, there are Creoles, and there are Creoles, what we call the Creolesde coleur,my dear.

The Creoles of color.

[ Chuckles ] I might have a little French, a little Spanish, whatever we picked up along the way, but a whole lot of African.

And that's what makes this city so unique is we have a blend of people and a blend of food.

>> What is your favorite Christmas memory?

>> I came up in a little town called Madisonville, and you started on Christmas Eve, really, you're prepared, you've got your house ready, and back in those days, you're scrubbing the floors.

You're painting and doing everything, getting ready for Christmas.

You're going in the woods, trying to find you some holly berries, and that's what you pin to your curtains.

And, oh, it was all kinds of things preparing for Christmas.

So, when Christmas Day came, you celebrated the whole thing until Kings' Day.

And that's what I try to still do with my children.

On Christmas Day, we going to have dinner.

We going to get together.

>> That notion of family not only sustains and enriches the music of New Orleans but its cuisine as well.

Everything is passed along here at the family table.

>> If you have my gumbo here, that is the same way my grandmother made it, my great-grandmother.

We didn't change anything.

We did the same things that our grandmother did, so you get part of our heritage in our food because we cook it the same way.

>> There is a communal spirit of inclusion all over New Orleans.

People are just friendly.

While we were conducting our interviews, some yelled greetings from cars.

>> How y'all doing?

Hello.

>> How you doing?

Others just rolled into frame and started a conversation.

Others literally stopped the bus in the middle of the street to say hello.

>> I'm proud of you.

>> Thank you.

>> Hang in there.

>> Visitors to the city often experience that same welcome.

>> You're one of the family.

You're adopted.

>> Actor Jim Caviezel of "Person of Interest," "The Count of Monte Cristo," and "The Passion of the Christ" has now shot four films in New Orleans.

The diversity of the architecture makes it a natural shooting location.

>> You feel like you're in Europe.

It has a haunting presence about it, not off-putting but alluring.

With these trees that hang over the street, it's very enchanting.

>> Caviezel shot his film "When the Game Stands Tall" on this hidden field at Isidore Newman School in uptown New Orleans.

>> I didn't know that the Manning boys went to school here, but I thought it was the most unusual setting for a football field I'd ever seen in the country.

>> There are now movie studios all over Louisiana, like Second Line Stages downtown.

Caviezel can't get enough of the city.

Years ago while attending a Mardi Gras ball, a well-known Louisianian approached him and repeated one of his movie lines.

>> I had just done "The Count of Monte Cristo," and I hear this, "Revenge, revenge, revenge, that's me, sir."

It was Governor Edwin Edwards.

>> Edwin Edwards!

>> [ Laughs ] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> Okay, Miss Leah.

You have to teach me how to make something that is uniquely New Orleans at Christmastime.

>> This is what we call "oysters en pâte."

The Creoles always made this at Thanksgiving and Christmastime, but you always served that at your festive dinners.

It's oysters in a patty of phyllo-dough shell.

>> What do you put in first, Miss Leah?

>> You always have oysters, you know?

Particularly around November, Christmas, oysters are plentiful, so you get you some oysters.

Get some bell pepper, some onion, celery, parsley -- things that make color.

Okay.

You have a little skillet, and you put some butter, melt your butter, and you sauté your onions, your bell pepper, your celery.

All that in there -- you can mash a little bit of garlic, not too much garlic.

Then you sauté that till it's tender.

Then you chop your oysters.

You chop 'em, mince 'em up, put them in there, let them sauté, put a little bit of the oyster water in it, let it cook down till all that comes together with some salt and pepper.

Then you make -- You put your oysters in.

You can put a few little whole oysters for show in it.

Then you make that and fill your shells.

Then that oyster dressing that we sautéd in the butter -- we fill it up.

>> Mm-hmm.

>> We put it in there.

We put the top back on it.

And before we come to the table, we put it in the oven, get it warm... >> Mmm.

>> ...come to the table with it.

>> Merry Christmas.

>> Merry Christ-- And don't ask for two!

>> Okay, I won't ask for two.

>> No, one!

>> Just one.

>> I have a cousin, I told you, that took two.

That was a no-no.

>> [ Laughs ] >> I don't think he got invited again.

[ Both laugh ] The Creole would say, "Huîtres en pâte," you know -- oysters, or huîtres, en pâte.

And you had that at every meal.

You had that oyster patty.

I don't care what else you had.

At Christmas and Thanksgiving, you had that.

And it's just a puff pastry shell, and the bakers all make it, you know, but they only do it seasonal because that's when we use it.

>> Will you have a little with me?

>> No.

I'm okay.

You just have the oysters.

See, the shell is a crispy shell.

>> Oh, it's delicious.

Look at that.

Beautiful.

>> And when that's nice and warm, that is so tasty and so good.

>> Mmm!

>> And, as I said, don't take more than one... >> Okay.

>> [ Laughs ] >> I'm gonna save the rest of that one.

Ohh!

>> ...so they can have a chance.

>> Oh, this is good.

You don't have a shot at getting a taste of this.

Forget it.

Oh, Miss Leah... merry Christmas.

You've already given me your gift.

>> Well, thank you.

>> Mwah!

Delicious.

♪ >> Though Christmas has a way of rolling right into Mardi Gras here, one season at a time.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, let's savor Christmas.

And we hope that yours is marked by the same tradition and improvisatory spirit that we enjoy here in New Orleans.

On behalf of the NOLA Players, I'm Raymond Arroyo wishing you a merry Christmas.

And may your good times roll right into the new year.

[ "Christmas in New Orleans" playing ] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> Major funding provided by...