Apr 13 2009
Easter Monday - Le lundi de Pâques
I hope everyone had a great Easter… or whatever you celebrate on that day if you don’t do Easter.
In France, we usually do the egg hunt thingy, eat chocolate, but no honey ham or ham at all (“jambon“)… some people eat lamb (”agneau“) though. I was thinking about the fact that we don’t actually eat ham as people do here, and especially not honeyed.
If you go to France you won’t find honey, or maple syrup ham or any sugared ham at all. Cooked ham stays cooked and we do have a lot more choices in dry cured ham, for a more affordable price of course.
We usually eat dry cured ham as an “entrée” - people here call “appetizer”:
and regular cooked ham as well but also in quiches or omelettes and such.
I don’t think there is any sugary meal we cook with honey or syrup… I personally think it ruins the taste of the actual meat and doesn’t taste right. But that’s just me, that’s what you get when you haven’t grown up eating it I’m sure.
Anyways, another thing that we do not have for Easter and seems extremely strange to me is the Easter Bunny… we do have Easter Bunny chocolates but we don’t have the character, the person dressed up as a bunny.
But what we do have is a day off on the Monday following Easter, the Easter Monday and people usually have a 4-day-weekend on that occasion (”faire le pont“).
I must agree about the sugar on meat. I never had it growing up but my mother-in-law used to make the ham with pineapple and brown sugar and cherries! I could not eat it. My husband puts sugar on everything.
Do you have special church celebrations over the weekend? In America it’s a huge religious weekend. Doesn’t “pont” mean bridge? How is “faire le pont” translated literally?
Please keep teaching us your culture and your vocabulary.
Thanks.
Thank you for your comment.
It literally means “to make the bridge” which means that you ‘re bridging from one day to another day through the weekend.
We do have celebrations in churches and in some cities we have processions - not as much as in Spain or Hispanic countries though.
In the south, in Arles, there is the Feria, which is a corrida held for Easter weekend.