No. 212: Lundi de Pâques
Another one of the things I love about France is the country’s dedication to national holidays, especially in the springtime.
While most of my friends and family stateside are back at work today, us lucky folks in France are quietly enjoying Easter Monday sans travail. I remember envying my friends who had kids in Catholic schools when we lived in the Wild West, their children never seemed to be in school.
Now that we live in France, we don’t have to play hooky from school, we can, even as lapsed Catholics, benefit from the excess of sanctioned religious and national holidays during April and May. This is a particularly good year as all the “one-off” spring holidays fall during the week. In fact we only have one full week of school/work during the month of May.
And as I mentioned, today, Easter Monday, is actually a national holiday in this Catholic nation, so even if you’re not a believer, you still get to spend today recovering from the holiday, sort of a vacation from your vacation, which in my opinion is the best way to end a vacation.
Vocabulaire
Lundi de Pâques: Easter Monday
sans travail: without work
365+ Things I Love About France 
I loved those extra holidays when the kids were small (and they really needed the break from the long school days.) But now as a self-employed person, I have to work anyway! 😉
The extra holidays are great. I too am self-employed but I really make an effort to completely switch off on these “gift” fêtes. I treat them like I would treat a “snow day” in Colorado and hope my clients are goofing off too.
I didn’t realise that Easter is not a 4 day break in some countries (It is here in Australia 🙂 ) I agree, the French do know how to celebrate a holiday!
Four days! Wow that’s a luxury. In France it is a three day weekend, in the US it’s just a regular weekend. Maybe I should move to Australia next?
😉 Thank you for commenting and for stopping by.
Nancy
Gosh, not even Good Friday off in the US?
No ma’am. It’s that separation of church and state thing…although the conservatives have turned that whole thing on its head!
Perhaps in the future we will be able to nominate a couple of religious holidays we’d like to celebrate each year and non-Christians won’t be forced to take Christmas off whilst needing to take annual leave for days that are important to them.
bonne idée!