Ascension Day

May 13, 2010. Ascension Day. The sky is a milky gray and the air is cool, hardly above 50°, too cool for the month of May. Too cool for the thousands of Frenchmen who've headed to the beach, to the country, or to the mountains for France's first big holiday weekend of the season, a summer preview of sorts. For you see, today is férié, a holiday. Stand on a street corner and ask random pedestrians why, most will shrug their shoulders. They have the day off, that's all that counts. One out of ten might be able to explain the religious significance of the holiday. Though the French are nominally Catholic in their majority, most have deserted the pews of their churches, and besides Christmas and Easter, they are basically ignorant of their faith. On Sundays, they "worship" at their neighborhood outdoor market or among the furniture displays of Ikea.

When a holiday falls on a Thursday, as is the case today, anyone who can, takes Friday off as well and this makes what the French call a pont, a "bridge," a long weekend of four days. Last evening, returning from work around eight, I rode in almost empty metro cars (at that hour I usually travel standing, cheek-to-cheek with other commuters). Holiday travellers were already packed into planes and TGV's, high-speed trains, escaping to beach retreats or family houses deep in the French countryside.

Was their ever a people who loved holidays as much as the French? They love them so much that the month of May alone contains four: May first, May Day, where the French celebrate workers' rights; May 8th, V-E Day, commemorating May 8, 1945, the Allied victory in Europe; Ascension Day; and then ten days later, the Pentecost. Some years that works out to at least three long weekends, three ponts, for the French. This year they'll only get two because the first and the eighth fell on a Sunday - which means today's bad weather is a big, big disappointment. The first long holiday weekend has begun with a fizzle, whereas the French were hoping for an explosion of heat and sun.

Oh well, in what is - at least for the time being (a national austerity program is in the works) - a true workers' paradise, the French can place their hopes in the long weekend of the Pentecost, only ten days away! Maybe the weather will have improved by then and they can get a head start on their summer tan.