That leads me straight to the topic: having celebrated Easter in France I am of course compelled to tell you what it was like, and the differences between here and come.
So today is second day of Easter and it is a day off. Thursday and Friday were normal working days though, we’re talking school and everything. To me that is awfully strange for, I believe, France is much more religious than at home, not even to mention that they’re Catholics! Thursday, and Friday are red days back home. That mean holy to the extent that there is no school and if you’re working on these days (say in the public sector), you get paid the triple of your normal salary.
Now, the second thing to say is that normal Easter holidays (yes OK then, according to my standards) are held the week before Easter, i.e. the same week as the Holy Thursday and Good Friday, so that you are off on those holy days. You obviously also get second day of Easter off. That way you’re technically off two weekends, a week and a day.
Here, people are only off on the Monday, but wait, and thenEaster holidays are held one week later!! Actually, that depends on where in France you are, because the holidays are split up between regions to prevent massive floods of tourists to the best parts of France at the same time (why does it feel as if I already wrote about that system…?). But so here, you have Easter holiday after Easter! How does that, in reality, make sense? For two lovely weeks though they have the slightly awkward non-Easter Easter-holiday.
Now to Easter itself. I can’t say I have a perfect example, since my host family consists of a non-practicing Catholic and a Buddhist…but since they do an Easter-egg hunt, you would still think they did the rest too.
So at home, on Easter, we always eat lots of egg for lunch. Or that is, my family does, because I don’t really like boiled eggs all that much. We colour the eggs (sometimes), or at the very least wrap them in onion and red onion peel and then boil them to make them pretty and coloured. Then eat. Dinner we have lamb. Without exception.
Since I had eggs for dinner on Saturday, the night before Easter, I asked them if they didn’t also eat eggs on Easter.
‘What…? No…’ the father said. ‘A slightly better dinner than usual, that’s all,’
Slightly better in this case meant something that requires cooking but that can be anything. No specific Easter lamb. Nor even Easter dinner that is the same every year.
That’s not so much funny as it is just…different though. I guess the funniest thing was when I asked the kids how their Easter egg hunt had gone, and the girl said that her eldest brother had found the most, or a total of 23 eggs.
Below you have an image of the different types of Easter eggs I’m used to. And the sizes. And the contents.
But no, no. When we eventually did an own Easter egg hunt at the house, it turned out to just be tiny chocolate Easter eggs. Like if you buy a bag of Haribo or chocolate…caramels or whatever. And those tiny pieces of candy they had hidden. They were so small they actually managed to be hidden in the tall grass and one got stepped on…
But overall it was a nice day.
And now there are only 4 days until I’m leaving the family. I will write a post-au pair entry some time at the end of the period.
Until then, hope you enjoy your chocolate!