French word of the day: Les anniversaires
Published: November 14, 2024
And just like that it is nearly Christmas! The joke in amongst the French is that while the U.S. has Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You as the “official” kickoff to Christmas, in France it is hearing that the SNCF national rail workers are threatening to strike for the holidays.
(Yes, they strike nearly every Christmas and as a special this year, also threatened to strike at the Olympics, before they demands were quickly met by the govt.)
Anywhoo, I know there was a big presidential election in the U.S. and that the German government just collapsed last week (we presume the two things are not related). But since I am French and Canadian, I shall stick to topics I can vote in.
Instead, chez nous we are fully focused on birthdays. Specifically French kids’ birthdays (anniversaires).
As I mentioned last year, we have now moved to the ‘burbs, and this meant a whole new school and new school friends. In our old neighborhood, I knew a lot of the parents and their children since they were toddlers, since we tended to cross the same people at créche (nursery), maternelle, extra-curriculars, etc.
Here in the new ‘hood, since I didn’t have the phone numbers for any of the parents, I let my kids “overinvite” the number of kids we wanted to have over, presuming that it would be like a wedding where 30% of guests can’t make it. (Spoiler: it is more complicated than that.)
This meant we sent out a lot of invitations. In return, my kids are now invited to their parties.
And since French people won’t schedule events during the summer or October school holidays, and September was too early to have made friends, all these autumnal birthday parties are squished in the 6-8 weeks between now and the December Christmas holidays. (The day of the actual birthday doesn’t matter. One parent scheduled their January kid’s birthday in the middle of May.)
Parents will send out invites about 3-5 weeks in advance, trying to secure the best dates. The day of the week you pick is very important you see:
- Sunday afternoons are best, with the most likelihood of having all your invitees accept. Many shops are closed on Sunday, other than major commercial zones, so parents have plenty of time to chauffeur kids around.
- Saturday afternoons are acceptable, if another kid’s parent has already snatched up the Sunday. (There are some extracurriculars on Saturday however, so watch out.)
- And as in my last newsletter, no-school Wednesdays is the day you pick if you want to show your kid that you are making an effort, but don’t actually want a whole lot of kids to show up.
And to be clear, this is very much an event just for kids. French parents are just supposed to drop off their kids exactly on time and pick them up exactly on time, without asking any extraneous questions. The host parent may politely ask if you would like stay for a coffee, but you must refuse as the host has to get back to wrangling the little monsters.
It is to be a pure exercise in baby-sitting, where the drop-off adult is supposed to find a different activity to occupy themselves.
You the parent may stay for a few minutes at pick-up if you really want, but the host parent probably just wants silence, and they don’t remember which kid you came with anyway. It is not a moment to try to connect with other adults.
So never mind anything else on the schedule, my OH and I are now glorified social secretaries, personal shoppers and chauffeur.
Btw note to parents, if you live within 30 miles of a Disneyland (Paris), I highly recommend fobbing your kids off with a trip to Disney instead throwing them a birthday party. It is sooooo much simpler. (Caveat: it only works for a few years, until the kids become blasé to Disney.)
Cake anyone?
In other news:
- An interesting statistic making the rounds: the City of Paris has a shocking number of public employees absent from work any given day. The number of days absent per employee is apparently 39.6 days at the Paris City hall. For comparison it is 11.6 days/year in the private sector and 14.5 days in the public sector in France. But no matter, the poor management or the exploding €8.3billion city deficit, Mayor Anne Hidalgo is on Time’s 100 Climate 2024 list.
- Former socialist French President François Hollande is launching his own podcast « Un président devrait écouter ça », aiming for a political comeback. The first episode is going to be discussing the American election.
- President Macron is now a pet-owner. He was gifted two dogs, Jules and Jeanne by the President of Kazakhstan. (Don’t all presidential gifts revert back to the state, rather than the President? So I guess we are now all part-dog-parents of the Jules and Jeanne.)
In the blog:
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