One woman's €4 million holiday gift to a French town

Christmas is a time of giving - something that's drummed into many of us from an early age, although if we're honest receiving might be much more pleasurable.

Well, the town of Chalon-sur-Saône in the south of the Burgundy region of France is the recipient of a huge donation this Christmas thanks to one benefactress.

Jeanne Parent died in July at the age of 90, and in her will she left her whole fortune - estimated at almost four million euros - to the town's centre communal d'action sociale (CCAS), the public body responsible for helping those in need.

It's a sum that will allow the local authority to "strengthen its social policies" as became clear when it announced the 2010 budget last week and outlined how and where the money would be spent.

Almost half of it will be used to move the offices of the CCAS from its current location to one which "will be more adapted to its needs, most notably in terms of access for the disabled.

Another €550,000 has been earmarked to buy a house for "people in difficulty and in particular the homeless during the winter period".

And the remaining €400,000 will be spent on the purchase of a building for a child day care centre.

Quite a legacy by any measure, and one which will the local authority intends to "honour" by naming both a public building and one of the town's streets after Parent.

The bequest was perhaps made easier by the fact that Parent was an only child who never married, and although there were distant family members who could have contested the will and claimed inheritance rights, they chose not to.

Instead they reportedly informed the local authorities that Parent had "always wanted to leave everything she had to the town."

As her second cousin, Raymond Rouch, said in an interview with the local newspaper, le journal de Saône-et-Loire, Parent had been brought up to be frugal.

She worked hard, qualified as a pharmacist and amassed her wealth by investing wisely in local businesses, property, shares and jewellery.

"All money that was earned was put to one side," Rouch told the newspaper.

"Jeanne didn't like to spend."

While the tale of Parent's legacy might well be one of a woman's extraordinary generosity, it's also tinged with sadness.

She left nothing to family members apart from hundreds of photographs because, according to Rouch, that is "what they had asked for" and "what they wanted as souvenirs."

But his wife, Monique, told the newspaper that Parent could have left some money, however that wasn't what they really regretted.

"What we're really sorry about is that when Jeanne died, nobody turned up to her funeral," she said.