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Today is Pentacost, named as such as it falls fifty days after Easter. It celebrates the visit of the Holy Spirit to the disciples. You can call it Whitsun if you're British, same thing, different scrabble score.
It was at this moment the disciples began to speak in tongues, a useful skill that is still valued today. I often wish my classes would get a visit, but in the meantime we'll plug on with a few communication activities.
Pentacost is an interesting day in France, because after being a bank holiday since time immortal, in a country that manages not to do a full week's work at all in the month of May, it has been stopped, wiped off the calender, absorbed, nuked, whatever. Well, kind of.
Basically what happened is this, after the heatwave of 2003 (which I spent lying on the sofa with the shutters shut, watching reruns of Dallas and Derrick with baby and toddler sliding around in pools of sweat,) lots of old people died, many of whom had been dumped at accident and emergency by their loving families on their way to their annual holiday in their villa in the South.
The French government decided that, rather than unburdening the tax payer, old people dying was not actually a good thing and must be stopped. Governments do this kind of thing, in the UK they tell everyone how much to drink on which days, here it's all about people wilting in heatwaves.
So, a law was passed in 2004 whereby employers paid an extra 0.30% of salaries to a special fund destined for the dependent, the elderly and handicapped that is. In exchange the employee works an extra day - Pentacost bank holiday to be precise.
Except they don't. While this law is all very well in theory, practice - as so often in the land of snails and wine - is another thing. Many companies just take a day off annual holiday entitlement, the national rail company - SNCF has its employees work an extra three minutes every day so they can have the day off.
Schools are closed, with the teachers working an extra day at some other time - but nobody knows when, not even the teachers.
It does have the advantage of being a holiday for many with the shops still open, the weather is usually good, and let's face it - a day off work for whatever reason is not something I'm ging to turn my nose up at.
Just one final thing, am I the only one to notice how the day we chose to sacrifice to help old people in heatwaves is represented by a load of guys with groovy little flames sprouting out of their head?
