The galette des rois in 2025 is an occasion for a soirée, a chance to relax and spend time with friends and family, and to meet new people as well.
It’s also interesting to consider the different places one might buy a galette from in France; some supermarkets sell them, but there are also many, many boulangeries (bakeries) as well; it turns out that the majority of French people prefer to buy their galettes from a boulangerie rather than from a supermarket, and that’s a part of France’s proclivity for what's called the petit marché (little market). The petit marché refers to all the small businesses that specialize in selling a particular kind of goods, such as a bakery, a fishmonger, a cheese shop, a wine shop, a jeweler, a clothing store, a shoe shop, etc. While big supermarkets certainly do exist, they don’t dominate anywhere near as much as Walmart and Target have dominated small-business shops in the USA. I’d say that France is very much aware of this, and there’s a sense that the petit marché is one of the things that gives France its unique character. In many parts of Paris, there are whole streets of petit marchés, and walking through them is a unique experience - I suppose the closest thing to it in the USA would be a mall.
Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPe0JtCsKTs&t=14s
https://laroutedesgourmets.fr/blog/histoire-de-la-galette-des-rois-en-france/
