To Holiday or not to Holiday?
Yesterday was Pentacote, minor holiday in the catholic world that was also, until recently, another work holiday in France, a country where work holidays outnumber varieties of cheese.
Until recently, I say, because two years ago, Pentacôte was officially downgraded to a simple workday in France just like any other.
This downgrade was the official government response to intense public outrage two years ago following the brutal heat wave in August 2003 that left 15000 elderly dead from dehydration and other heat-related causes. An outraged French public, upon returning home from their annual month-long August holidays and finding that tante Ghislaine and oncle François were no longer with them except in spirit, demanded explanations from the government. State officials, who had spent the better part of the blistering month on the various beaches of the world themselves, had to come up with some sort of official-sounding measure that would renew frenchpersonnes’ confidence that a) of course the French govt was fully capable of controlling the weather if it had only not been on holiday itself, and b) they (frenchpersonnes) could continue to take the month of August off without having to worry whether grand-mère and grand-père, left behind in the unventilated Paris apartment, were drinking the recommended minimum daily quantity of Evian.
The principal official-sounding measure issued by the perspiring govt was that frenchpersonnes would work on Pentacôte. They would do this in an inspiring show of solidarity, not receiving pay for their workday (which up until then had been a paid holiday) but rather ceding the wealth generated by working on a ‘holiday’ to the govt, who would redistribute it in some way guaranteed to help improve the sort of the elderly.
This did not go down well with the public, who will do many things to help their fellow man, even old ones, but working a whole day without pay is not one of them. So, like many french laws that attempt to change things, respect for this law became ‘tentative’, then ‘optional’. And as of yesterday, ’selective’.
(There is an old joke that the French tell about the Belge or Poles, or Corsicans, or whoever they’re feeling smarter than at any given time, about how the govt of that country decided that the British way of driving, ie, on the left side of the road instead of the right side, wasn’t such a bad thing, and that it would be a good thing to do it in their own country. But officials couldn’t decide on the timing of the change, afraid that people would be perturbed by too abrupt a change in habits.
The compromise that was eventually reached, that was deemed satisfactory to all sides, was that during the first 30 days of the new method, only heavy trucks would drive on the left…
Ha, ha…)
So, on this, the second attempt at a Pentacôte as non-holiday workday, the first results are in:
- School teachers went to work but students were given the day off.
- Parents, who were supposed to go to work, wound up staying home to care for their children.
- Businesses were expected to remain open but truck deliveries were forbidden.
- The wonderful open farmers’ markets everywhere in France were open, but for lack of delivery, the stands were empty.
- Because the markets were bare, the restaurants didn’t bother to open.
- MacDonalds did a thriving business.
