You can play a little game, every Pentecost Monday, casually ask: “What is Pentecost again? »
If you ask the same thing on the other side of the border, you will get the same answers, the language will just be different!
It’s a holiday for the same reason everywhere
Pentecost is a Catholic religious holiday, it is celebrated on the 7th Sunday after Easter, 50 days later.
Besides Pentecost, it comes from the Greek “pentekostề”which means the fiftieth.
To put it simply, Jesus died on Good Friday, he was resurrected on Easter Day, he went to heaven to join God the Father at the Ascension… and at Pentecost, God sends to men on Earth the spirit of his son .
Pentecost is that: the coming to Earth of the Holy Spirit.
We celebrated Pentecost on Sunday and to recover from the event, Monday was offered… that’s why Pentecost Monday is a holiday: to recover from a Catholic holiday that, nowadays, not many people celebrated the night before!
It is not for nothing that France tried to remove this day from 2005
To make it an extra day of work, the benefits of which are used to finance aid for the elderly and disabled (we were then a few years after the deadly heat wave of 2003).
Today, the day of solidarity can take place any time in the year, not necessarily at Pentecost which officially became a public holiday again in 2009.
Where did France get this idea?
Right next door, IN GERMANY!
In 1994, the German federal government wanted to withdraw the Pentecost holiday, arguing that it was to help the elderly, 10 years before France.
It almost went like a letter in the mail.
The Germans only disputed one thing: not Pentecost because in the month of June, it is the time when we take advantage of a day like this the most.
Result, it is the festival of penances and prayers which was withdrawn (Protestant holiday almost unknown in France), celebrated before 1994, in November throughout Germany.
Pentecost is a public holiday in France and therefore in the 3 border countries of Lorraine.