This year, France is celebrating La Fête des Mères a celebration that originated centuries ago, on Sunday 29 May.
Celebrating women is not a modern concept! It goes back to Greek mythology when
Rhea, the mother of all gods and goddesses
was duly celebrated during spring. The Romans took over the celebration and the
cult of Cybele, the mother of all
the Roman gods, survived until the 4th century AD.
The French thought of celebrating mothers and their families as
early as in 1806 when Napoleon I intended to implement an official date! But
alas, History decided otherwise! The next attempt to create a Mothers’ Day
occurred in 1906, a century later, in the little village of Artas in the
department of Isère and at the instigation of a man named Prosper Roche who founded
the Union Fraternelle in order to pay
tribute to the parents of large families. Artas has since been recognized as
the cradle of the Fête des Mères celebration.
The city of Lyon followed the example and organized a Mothers’
Day in 1918 to pay tribute to all the women who lost a son and/or husband
during World War I, a conflict during which the loss of human lives was
astronomical. A couple of years later a Mothers’ Day celebrating the women of
large families was implemented in order to encourage women to have children and
repopulate a country that had lost 10.5% of its active male population! The
celebrations included the award of a medal,“Médailles de la Famille Française”, to those who had
many children. However, it was not until 1929 that La Fête des Mères became an official celebration.
It didn’t become part of the calendar until 1941, though, when Marshal Pétain re-launched the
celebration during World War II, once more in order to encourage the
re-population of the country! The notion of family and housewife were to become
the base of the French society for the years to follow. The celebration was
very controversial at the time, not only because it had been implemented by the
Regime
of Vichy, but
also because many thought that it was a sexist concept that denied emancipation
to women; in other words that recognized them only good enough to have
children, cook and clean.
People seemed to have forgotten that women had been working in
factories to replace the men who were fighting at the front, they had
contributed to the war effort, they had proven that they were equal to men and
now they were being asked to return to their cooking? The stigma remained for a
only few years, however, as women’s suffrage was granted by General Charles De
Gaulle at
the end of the war (better late than never!) and they painfully but
successfully gained their emancipation! French Mothers’ Day is celebrated on
the last Sunday in May, unless Pentecost falls on that day, when it is then
transferred to the first Sunday in June.
Gai Jacobs
Courtesy Travel France Online -
http://www.travelfranceonline.com/
