May Holidays

There are four major national holidays (jours feriés) in France during the month of May:

1 May - Labor Day/May Day
8 May - Victory in Europe Day (end of WWII)
13 May - Ascension
23-24 May - Pentecost (the Catholic holiday is Sunday and the public holiday is Monday)

For a country that claims to be secular, there are a lot of Catholic holidays in that mix, but who am I to judge?

Anyway, for each of these holidays, most everyone gets off from work. All libraries in Paris were/will be closed during these days, for instance. (So much for wrapping up my research this month.)

Many of our French friends showed disappointment that the first two national holidays fell on Saturdays, since that meant that they didn't get off from work. They'll make up for that thanks to tomorrow's holiday, which effectively creates a four-day weekend for many workers. The French expression for taking off the day between a holiday and the weekend is "faire le pont" - to bridge that gap between days off with yet another day off.

As if there weren't already enough holidays in May, France decided to celebrate one more: La Nuit des Musées, or "Long Night of Museums" or "A Night at the Museum" (as I've decided to call it). Basically, on Saturday night, May 15, tons of museums will be open way late (until midnight or 1 AM), and will be free to visitors after 6 or 7 PM.

The publicité for this new holiday seems to suggest that it comes around only as often as a full solar eclipse, but it actually happens every year around this time. Thankfully, unlike Ascension and Pentecost, La Nuit des Musées is a holiday we can really get into.

Into the Streets, May 1st!*

You may not have noticed, especially if you don't live in a big city in the US, but yesterday was May Day.

France, like most European countries, has designated May 1 as Labor Day, and people celebrate it with great gusto. (Too bad "Real Americans" wouldn't even consider celebrating May Day, given its roots in Pagan rituals and its present identity as the Christmas of International Socialism. They forget that once upon a time, Tea Party-like populists played a big role in the advent of the modern-day holiday.) Anyway, like I was saying, great gusto:

As you can tell, Paris is a particularly exciting place to be on May First. All the major labor unions and dozens of other groups mobilize their members and enlist as many people as possible to march in what the French call a "cortège," or a parading group. Starting in the morning, different groups assemble at different parts of the city and steadily converge on Place de la République, from which a collective cortège eventually departs.

While everyone's waiting to get in line in the cortège, they engage in all sorts of musicking, dancing, and general frolicking.

Even non-Anarchists and -Socialists participate in the tradition of buying sprigs of muguet (Lily of the Valley), which are supposed to bring good luck and happiness all year. (We participated.) One of the labor unions referred to this tradition in a slickly-designed poster which also emphasizes some of the issues at the forefront of demonstrators' minds, namely the rising retirement age, unemployment, and wealth inequality:


Another major controversy addressed by a large proportion of participants was the status of sans-papiers, or undocumented immigrants. Supporters of immigrants' rights came out in force to insist on the humanitarian dimension of this challenging and divisive issue. We watched the group below pass by the café where we had lunch on their way to join the masses at République.

As much as we would have liked to have followed the cortège to its conclusion, we ultimately had to get back to the apartment so Gladis could collect her bags and head to the airport. But all that demonstrating in support of social and economic justice was hard to leave behind. Couldn't May Day come more than once a year?

* This post's title comes from a protest song I once studied in a Music and Politics class. The text was written by Alfred Hayes in 1934 and set to music by various modernist composers for a song competition. Aaron Copland won, but my favorite setting was by Hans Eisler.

Happy Easter!

Paris can't seem to make up its mind about Easter. Lots of things are closed today and tomorrow - schools, the BN, the Grands Magasins - but lots of other things are open - museums, local boulangeries, parks. Schools have spring break starting two weeks from now, but people still call it "Easter break," much as they do in the U.S. Flowerbeds are bursting with color but temperatures have been hovering in the upper 40s (Fahrenheit, obvi). Whereas I'd expect everyone to be hunkered down with family obligations today (including a big dinner), I have a rehearsal and a photo shoot scheduled late this afternoon, and no one I know has left town for the long weekend.

Still, it's not like anyone could miss Easter's arrival. Egg-shaped balloons hang from balconies and delectable desserts beckon from storefront windows. Yesterday we stopped by La Grande Epicerie at Le Bon Marché with our most recent visitors, Rebecca and Moritz, and took in the sights and smells.


Happy Easter, everyone!

Passover à Paris

Passover - a holiday centered around food if there ever was one - is pretty easy to celebrate almost everywhere. Sure, it's a little more challenging to observe the various dietary requirements in Paris, where delectable baked goods are available on every corner. But as long as you have access to lots of veggies and beans and meat and matzoh, you're set.

Not that we should take any of that for granted, especially not matzoh. I stopped in three supermarkets before I finally found this critically-important cracker (Monoprix to the rescue!). At first this surprised me, since there's a large Orthodox Jewish population in our neighborhood. I ultimately realized that the Orthodox Jews probably shop in places where all the food is kosher by default, rather than just 4 shelves at the end of an aisle.

The matzoh here is nothing like the matzoh we're used to. (I never realized what a strangle-hold Manischewitz and Streit's had on Ashkenazic Jewish cuisine until those brands were no longer available.) This matzoh - from the Sephardic tradition - is thicker, less crunchy, and strangest of all, it's round!


Round matzoh, a complete lack of Haggadot (the prayer books used for the Passover service), tiny chairs on which pillows don't fit well - these are all minor inconveniences. The Seder goes on.

Thanks to all who shared our food and our traditions, and thanks for helping us create new ones: reading the Haggadah off computer screens and ending the service with "Next Year in Jerusalem - or Paris, whichever works out."

Exciting Times

Thanks to the marvels of modern technology, we were able to continue posting about Paris without even being here. Where were we, you wonder? Why, we were visiting Warsaw, way yonder!

Top Left: Frederick Chopin Airport; Top Right: Maggie with Kielbasa; Bottom Left: Warsaw Uprising Memorial; Bottom Right: Hliarious tiny communist-era car

Top Left: Palace of Science and Culture; Top Right: Chopin Monument; Bottom Left: Andrea - colleague, host, future argyle model?; Bottom Right: Warsaw Uprising Museum, "We Hate Communism" room

More reportage to come on this fantastic trip very soon. For now, we must focus on the task at hand: transitioning from Panda-à-Paris-Crashes-Warsaw to Panda-à-Paris-Celebrates-Passover. Tonight was the first time I can ever remember not getting together with tons of people to celebrate the first night of Passover, and this was mostly because we don't know anyone else celebrating here, but also partly because we just got home from Warsaw. But we still made do.

Tomorrow night we're going to throw a for-real Seder for some Paris friends, and we'll have more on that soon. For now, though, Happy Passover to everyone back home!

Fête de la Saint-Patrick

No one seems to be celebrating around here (at least not in Belleville, which seems to have welcomed every ethnic and religious group but Irish Catholics), but that needn't stop us from paying hommage to St. Patrick, aka Sanctus Patricius, aka Naomh Padraig, on his feast day. So here's some green from our photo archive.

Barbie, Rue Dénoyez, all made-up for the St. Paddy's Day Parade

Park behind the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris, 4e arr.

Lockers, Archives Nationales

Chinese New Year's Day Parade

Lobby, Hôtel Georges V

Completely unintelligible pedestrian sign, Lyon

Napoleon's "Camp" Bed, Fontainebleau

Wall tiles, Le Bon Marché

Design-y Lamps, 5e arr.

Happy St. Patrick's day!

Purim

A couple weeks back, Maggie mentioned that she had made hamantashen in honor of Purim, but we never got around to describing our Purim experience at Paris' only bilingual synagogue, Kehilat Gesher.

Purim, like many other Jewish holidays, celebrates a historical moment when a group of Jews escaped annihilation at the hands of a dastardly villain. The main ritual of Purim involves reading through a specific book - the Book of Esther, or Megillah in Hebrew - which recounts the tale of the beautiful Esther, who became queen to King Ahasuerus and prevented his minister, Haman, from killing all the Jews living in Persia. (The word "hamantashen" derives in part from the minister's name, and the cookies' shape is supposed to resemble his three-cornered hat.) During the reading of the tale, listeners are encouraged to drown out Haman's name through booing and other noisemaking. Since Purim is a joyous holiday (following the adage, "They tried to kill us, we survived, let's eat!"), rowdy behavior, heavy drinking, and social transgression is encouraged.

At Kehilat Gesher, we were greeted at the door by the rabbi, Tom Cohen, who was unrecognizable in a full leprechaun costume. Tom is one half of France's only husband-wife rabbi team; his French wife leads services at the synagogue in the 11th arrondissement where Adam, Rachel, and I went for Simchat Torah services in October. Despite the leprechaun costume and Tom's insistence that his ancestors were Irish (apparently Ireland was just a half-way point between Lithuania and the US) we were immediately struck by the uncanny similarities between Tom and Seth Rogen, in terms of both physique and personality. This immediately put us at ease, preparing us for the raucous service that followed.

Rabbi Tom encouraged the 30-or-so attendees to take turns reading from the Megillah in whatever language they liked - French, English, or Hebrew. Actually, what he wanted was not reading; he wanted people to sing. So a few brave souls tried making up their own tunes, but that turned out to be really hard. So others tried to fit the text to popular tunes, notably the March of the Toreadors from Carmen, the Marseillaise, and (weirdly) Jingle Bells (which probably worked the best). Add to this the fact that Tom started a drinking game where everyone took a shot of schnaps every time the words "festival," "feast," "drink," "eat," or "party" appeared, and the service got real enjoyable, real quick.

We had initially planned to meet Talya and Ari at the synagogue, but they showed up late enough that they only got to enjoy the last 10 minutes of the service. After it ended, we traveled back and forth between the reception, with its excellent food and drink, and the room where the service was conducted, since Ari was doing a quick read-through on his own. When he finished, he and Rabbi Tom had a long conversation about all the professors they had in common from rabbinical school (the reason why Ari is spending the year in Israel), and we got to hear about Rabbi Tom's wedding at a French château with 8 other rabbis officiating. Crazy!

We got the sense that Kehilat Gesher is a warm, inclusive community, and that Rabbi Tom does a great job of fostering a truly bilingual atmosphere. If you're in town and looking for a synagogue, check the Kehilat Gesher website to see whether services will be at their 17th arrondissement location, or at their other synagogue in St.-Germain-en-Laye, since they alternate between the two. And let us know if you're going, so we can join you!

Chinese New Year Bis

Just wanted to add these videos to Maggie's excellent slide show of Sunday's Chinese New Year festivities. Together, they cover about 15 minutes of the parade that passed us on Rue Beaubourg on its way to the Hôtel de Ville. At the very beginning you can hear and see the firecrackers Maggie featured in her post.

Happy New Year!

For the approximately 1.3 billion Chinese living around the world, Sunday marked the beginning of a new year - the Year of the Tiger! If you're like most people, you learned the Chinese zodiac from the placemat at your local Chinese restaurant. (If you don't know your sign, you can figure it out - and learn your sign compatibility - here. Or, just purchase your own set of placemats here.)

According to this blogger the majority of the Chinese population living around Belleville hail from Wenzhou, a city in southeastern China (this explains why our favorite Chinese restaurant is called Salon de Thé Wen Zhou!).

The New Year's Day parade began in our neighborhood (Belleville) and made its way to the Hotel de Ville in the center of the city. We actually caught up with it just as it passed the Centre Pompidou (Paris's modern art museum). We could hear it coming because of the awesome pyrotechnics you see below (three or four of these guys walked at the head of the parade, each dragging a smoking, popping, sparking crowd-clearing delight!).

The dragons, traditional costumes, and children dressed as tigers were brightly colored and helped us get in a celebratory mood. After all, our friends Katie and Darryl just arrived, so there's lots to celebrate!

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I am a pig and Louis and Panda are both rats. 

Shh... don't tell Louis!

Louis turns 26 on Monday (February 1), so tomorrow is his last opportunity to get in free to the Louvre as part of their under-26-on-Friday-night Special.

Will he go? I don't know! But if he does you can be sure that he will chat up the jeunes ont la parole, or the young art and art history students stationed throughout the museum, ready to tell you all about their favorite pieces of art.

Here's a not-so-great taken-on-the-sly photo of Louis learning about French sculpture from two weeks ago:

I'm sure he'll explain to you all that the nice young woman explained to him. And you will understand it and you will enjoy it.

And here's another memorable photo of Louis at the Louvre, standing next to ... uh ... Louis, what are you standing next to?

As you can see, the Louvre is an endlessly fascinating place. Louis has an endlessly fascinating face. And his birthday is coming up soon, so don't forget!

Christmas Eve Traditions

It's Christmas Eve here in Paris. Being away from family is difficult, but we're enjoying spending time with our friends Joy and Jake and creating our own holiday traditions. For example, we began the evening with a rousing game of French Monopoly.

We suspended the game to walk 10 minutes to the Église Notre-Dame de la Croix de Ménilmontant to attend the 11:00 p.m. Veillée de Noël service. The church is large, beautiful, and felt very much like a local parish (we had considered going to the other Notre Dame, but thought it might feel a bit too touristy).

The Veillée service consisted mainly of organ music, singing, and readings. We all liked it when the organist pumped up the bass, and didn't really like it when the song leader sang out of our range.

We left just in time to see the start of the midnight mass. It was cold, we're not Catholic, and hey, we had a Monopoly game to finish! Merry Christmas Eve!

Halloween

Not much to report. Even Le Monde couldn't come up with enough France-specific material to make a real article out of it. Instead, they have a slideshow of the holiday as celebrated throughout the world:

Halloween à travers le monde
LEMONDE.FR | 01.11.09

©

In Belleville, we saw only a handful of kids in full costume, and a handful more who weren't wearing a costume but were carrying some kind of plastic weapon: triton, spear, scythe, axe. Now that I think about it, that probably had nothing to do with Halloween.

The scariest things we saw this weekend were all concentrated at the Musée du Quai Branly, on which we'll comment more later. But in the spirit (pun intended) of the holiday, here are some artifacts from the museum that struck us as particularly Halloween-appropriate:

Statue from Central America

Mask from Greenland

Another Mask from Greenland

Actual Skulls/Heads from Oceania

More Skulls from Oceania

One cool Halloween event in Paris that we heard about but did not see: ZombieWalk 2009, a worldwide event with a strong Parisian following.

The unremarkable passage of Halloween here made me miss home more than anything else so far. Mostly because I have the best trick-or-treating ritual ever. Hope you all had a good one!