Labor Day, Armistice Day, Ascension Bridge, Whit Monday… Suffice to say that the month of May was saturated with bridges. Some take the opportunity to take a break from their hectic routine, while others indulge in their religious beliefs. However, declarations as to their removal have been causing a stir for the past few days.
And that doesn’t please everyone. In a message posted on his Twitter account on May 24, 2023, the elected representative of Europe Écologie Les Verts, Éric Piolle, requests the deletion of “references to religious holidays in our republican calendar”. This statement follows the tracking of certain schools and the Ministry of the Interior during the Eid holiday on April 21.
Offended by this tracking of Muslim children, Éric Piolle suggested the abolition of religious holidays, stating that “students and agents have the right to be absent for religious holidays”. Of the eleven public holidays in France, six of them are directly related to religion. “Let’s delete references to religious holidays in our republican calendar”, declares the elected official, for Le Point.
Following his remarks, the mayor of Grenoble would like to declare “holidays the secular holidays which mark our common attachment to the Republic, to revolutions, to the Commune, to the abolition of slavery, to the rights of women or LGBT people. “. Moreover, this idea tends less to abolish public holidays than to replace them with “republican” days.
The mayor of Grenoble directly questioned Pentecost Monday, celebrated by Christians on the seventh Sunday after Easter Sunday, marking the outpouring on earth of the Holy Spirit. Éric Piolle affirms that “at the beginning the public holidays are not to have vacation days but to go celebrate, lay a wreath, go to mass for Catholics”, while advocating “an evolution of society”. This questioning did not fail to react on the web.
As mentioned by Éric Piolle, this proposal is associated with the controversy surrounding the absence of students during the Eid holiday. “Mr. Darmanin had asked that we identify the children absent at the time of Eid. I find this extremely discriminating. In the mouth of Mr. Darmanin, we can clearly see what he means…”, he explains he at the microphone of BFMTV. Moreover, he regrets the one-sidedness that this debate is taking and adds that “either we are in culpable silence, or we are Islamo-leftists”.
However, Mayor EELV opposes the institutionalization of these festivals, preferring the possibility of being celebrated “all in discretion”.
