Monday, June 25, 2007

On St-Jean-Baptiste and la Fete Nationale

We had practice tonight. It's a nice night.

There's an American lady on our team and she wanted to know what the provincial holiday is all about. Someone gave her a pretty good explanation about how St-Jean-Baptiste is the patron saint of the Quebecois, but the name of the holiday was changed to the Fete Nationale during one of the stronger waves of nationalism, etc.

She nodded and seemed to get all this.

Then she asked: what does this all have to do with storming the Bastille?

Uh, nothing, we said. But I guess Baptiste and Bastille sound close enough to her that she thought they were related. Oh well.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I know I'll upset the Americans on this blog, but really.....!!! What was it, 2 French names that confused the poor dear???

cityofmushrooms said...

what??!! there's no storming the bastille on june 24???

Nanuk of the North, older but no wiser said...

Not just that. Apparently I'm spreading disinformation. I've been informed that St. Joseph is our patron saint and not St. Johnny Bapteme. Who knew? So how come I never went to a St. Joseph's parade when I was a kid?

John the Baptist = usurper of holidays.

cityofmushrooms said...

I'm jealous of all your saints-
we've got a rich part of town called st albert (founded of course by missionaries) that and all the ukrainian churches but it's not the same as saints joe and johnnie and madame defarge marching up and down ste catharine and setting off fireworks

Nanuk of the North, older but no wiser said...

MsMushrooms, you should visit the Vatican some day. You're such a Catholic wanna be.

cityofmushrooms said...

it's true-
when the united church of my yoot had communion (once a year at easter) they only had welch's grape juice for blood and yummy and exotic as welch's grape juice was- it didn't really cut it

Nanuk of the North, older but no wiser said...

Do Protestants believe in transubstantiation? i.e. did they actually transform that Welch's grape juice into the actual blood of Christ?

Because, if it was just symbolic, you was ripped off.

cityofmushrooms said...

as far as I understand it non-belief in transubstantiation is the whole raison d'etre of protestantism-that and getting the bible in your own language and getting rid of that distracting art-

welch's grape juice remains exotic tho...