With the sociologist Jean Viard, director of research at the CNRS, author of numerous books on France, we are talking today about May 8, this commemoration of May 8, 45, the victory of the Allies over Nazi Germany, and the end of the Second World War. May 8 has not always been commemorated. We can remember in particular that Giscard d’Estaing, between 1975 and 1980, had decided that we no longer commemorate this date.
franceinfo: Why is it important today to commemorate this date? What meaning does that have?
John Viard: Of course, it’s a win. It’s the end of the world war, it’s a victory over Nazism, it’s a victory over an ideology. November 11, which is the other commemoration of victory with Germany, was the war of 14-18, it did not have this ideological meaning. We could almost make it an anti-racist day if we wanted, to see the meaning that this fight actually had, and this fight has no era: to fight against racism, to fight against the Holocaust of the Jews, etc., obviously it’s not dated historically, so that’s important.
I think it’s “a battle of meaning” on May 8, and I think that’s why we postponed it. It is true that President Giscard d’Estaing had found that there were many commemorations on Germany, since there are two. And it is true that from this point of view, he was not wrong because in France, there are 11 public holidays, four of which have a political connotation. There is July 14, there is May 1 of course. And then there are May 8 and November 11 which are two commemorations of the end of the world war, but which are nevertheless for us in France, experienced as the end of the war with Germany. There is a real subject, which is that basically, public holidays remain fundamentally Christian in this fundamentally secular society.
You speak of a victory over ideology, there is also military victory, the end of the war and therefore the advent of peace. A lasting peace in Europe for more than 70 years, which is beginning to be threatened with the situation in Ukraine. But is it also peace that we celebrate on this day?
But of course, and that’s what we founded Europe on, on the idea that we’re celebrating peace, we’re celebrating the end of the war and we’re celebrating the idea that we’re going to try to build a continent around the idea of peace, which is the basis of the European idea that has brought us to today. So, it is true that we are in a new era. Ukraine is not part of the European Union, but the idea that there is a war in Europe, the idea that there is a country which, basically, is going to attack its neighbour, is a little as if we were going to occupy Brussels. The Belgians would be so surprised that, in my opinion, they would have no plan to protect themselves.
Here, we are in another era where I think that Europe, which was the continent of peace, will become more of a continent that will reflect on its protection, its sovereignty and in sovereignty, there is obviously not only the military, there is also energy and food. And we can clearly see this in the Ukrainian crisis, so that will lead us to another reflection. We were lucky to live 70 years of peace. This is the “peace and love” era of my generation, that of 68. But here, we are unfortunately getting out of it. We will have to remotivate ourselves otherwise.
This year, the calendar is a little teasing with public holidays falling on a Sunday, especially in May. One could imagine that to mark the fact that a day is really a holiday, it falls anyway on a working day, others do?
Yes, the Germans do it and they put their public holidays on Monday, especially the public holidays stemming from the religious culture. And I think that would make sense. Republican days, July 14, it cannot be otherwise, May 1, but on religious days, everyone is free to go to Church, for Christians, the public holiday, but we have a social asset, these 11 public holidays, we cannot touch them, but indeed, we would systematically decide that Monday is the public holiday, a bridge of three days, and then afterwards if during the week, on Thursday of the Ascension, or the day it falls, Christian believers want to commemorate, that’s their problem.
But most people do not commemorate from a religious point of view, I think that putting the holiday systematically on Monday, the days from Christianity, it would be a way to secularize the calendar without basically attacking traditions.