Madame noticed that the (laïque) French celebrate the Christian festival of Epiphany. And, of course, all the others.
I think it’s hilarious. Is it just an excuse for a day off?
Happy New Year!
It’s what Jesus would have wanted.
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It’s a very important day in Germany as well. People dressed as the three kings call at every house and bless it for the coming year. You will see the chalk sentences, C+M+B Year on or by the door. They and the Dutch also celebrate Saint Nicholas on December 6th not to mention Saint Martin of Tours on November 17th. Then there’s Karneval to fill in the time before Easter.
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The State is laïc, but that doesn’t mean the French are. There is a division between church and State but everyone is free to practice whatever religion they choose as long as it doesn’t involve polygamy or wearing head coverings in state buildings. And is preferably catholic.
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Well of course it is, try taking holidays away when people have had them for ages and can argue it’s a custom, that’s why we still have them, pfffff.
Also to help with your written French, laïc works like public, obv it’s confusing because of automatique and chronique etc etc BUT
laïc(s), laïcs(pl) = masculine
laïque(s), laïques (pl)= feminine
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What struck me was that the State (by having these public holidays) is celebrating Christian festivals.
It’s interesting how many of them coincide with much older pagan festivals …
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Even Christmas, it was all part of a cunning plan. 
And don’t forget the festival of Ishtar aka Eostre aka Easter. That was certainly in evidence in Sumeria in 2000bce.
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The point being …?
That a festival is a festival and over time can carry different labels. It’s just habit.
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That’s only true if you ignore what’s being celebrated and focus only on the time of year.
but that’s already happening.
I know many French people who “celebrate” Christmas every year, with all the festive trimmings indoors and out… presents and lovely food and drink.
Nothing whatsoever to do with Religion, it’s all to do with Father Christmas
Ho, Ho, Ho…
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I agree - though France is something of a special case - indeed, they need festivals to keep the window-dressers in employment!
That’s what the original celebrations were about though, isn’t it; the solstices, regular reliable flooding, natural rhythms and phenomena.
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I don’t know but it makes sense.
Here’s a thought that occurs to me. Are you (like any non-believer) like a restaurant critic who can write her reviews based only on watching a chef prepare a recipe, because you think it’s all unhealthy?
I can’t speak for others but for my part, my beliefs are based on my personal experiences and critical analysis of evidence that I’ve read or heard.
To continue your analogy, I study what goes into the food and form my opinion on the way it tastes - unless, of course, I find some of the ingredients or methods used unpalatable in which case I’ll mark it as ‘potentially interesting but not to be consumed or repeated.’
Oh no not at all, I had a wealth of varied religious practice through family and school as a small child, lit incense in Buddhist temples and cierges in Catholic churches, went to the Church of Scotland 3 Sundays a month and the Episcopal church the other, prayers every morning at school and evensong in chapel many evenings at university. I did RE O level and got an A (syllabus was my fave the OT). So I’m not entirely ignorant.
But sitting in various churches through the sermon, led me to think it’s a convenient fiction, that man invents and reinvents gods in his own image and that religion is a device for social control and cohesion and setting eg Ephraimites apart from Gileadites and giving oneself an identity - think about the man who couldn’t say Shibboleth and what happened to him. And cosmogony rather like rainbows depends on superior omnipotent beings and covenants with them, if your maths and physics don’t allow you to find other explanations.
I don’t see how it is logical to believe in a supreme being creator of the world but not alternative supernatural beings. I don’t believe in any of them.
Many of my favourite buildings are religious and I love singing hymns and church music, they still don’t lead to belief.
Edited to add my bedtime stories were Greek and Roman myths and they seemed a lot more likely than monotheism.
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Okay, maybe my simile needs work (or doesn’t work at all 
).
What I meant is that, to understand love, you need to experience the giving and receiving of it (just as to understand a good tartiflette, you have to taste it: just looking at the ingredients might well make you think it would be disgustingly rich).
Christianity is a faith of relationship rather than one of forms and practices and knowledge.
What exactly do you mean by that? (And if you mean what I think, it rather depends which variety of Christianity you’re talking about). My university speciality is the Islamic world, and I would say there too it depends.
Edited to add this is probably very dull for everyone so feel free to forget it.