New Orleans restaurants revive Creole custom Associated Press Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Updated 7:03 a.m., Tuesday, December 11, 2012 In the weeks surrounding Christmas, some 50 restaurants offer four- to five-course meals of pan-roasted oysters, braised pork belly, duck confit, foie gras beignets and other holiday delicacies. Though some restaurants serve reveillon dinners after midnight Mass on Christmas Eve and after midnight fireworks on New Year's Eve like in the old days, most offer the special menus during regular dinner hours. John Magill, a historian and curator at The Historic New Orleans Collection museum and research center in the French Quarter, says reveillon is French for "awakening" and was a term used by early Creoles to describe a meal that followed a celebratory event. Magill talks about reveillons in the 2009 book he co-wrote titled, "Christmas in New Orleans," which also touches on the long-held tradition of holiday shopping on streetcar-lined Canal Street, caroling in the French Quarter and worshipping at St.