It’s May – let’s faire le pont!
There are a few French words or phrases which aren’t in the
basic traveler’s vocabulary, but that help make sense of the world you
encounter in France. One of
these is faire la grève – to go on strike, which you may be unlucky enough to
learn if your trip coincides with one. That’s another topic.
But faire le pont – to make the bridge – is an expression
for the month of May. It
means to take an extra day off from work and make a bridge between the official
holiday and the weekend. For
example, today, May 1, is the fête du travail, and a Tuesday, so you might as
well have taken Monday off and voilà – a nice four day weekend.
Le pont des arts, in Paris - a favorite pont
May is traditionally an especially good month to faire le pont. This year’s jours feriés
include:
May 1 – fête du travail (Labor Day)
May 8 – Victoire 1945
May 17 – Feast of the Ascension
May 27 – Pentecoste
May 28 – Pentecoste Monday
That makes three good ponts, plus the weekend of Pentecoste,
a pont all in itself.
Though France is technically a secular country (remember the
Revolution?), religious holidays still figure on the calendar of legal
holidays. As Voltaire would have said, c'est le meilleur des mondes possibles.
