Good morning, students! Those French again leisurely, or more to the point, lazily, celebrate the Fourth of July ten days late, on July 14th. They’ll use preparing for the World Cup as an excuse. Oh puh-lease. This could be a problem of translation. The French word for four is quatre and fourteen is quatorze. Confusing! But you’d think by now they’d have figured it out?!
So why do they call it Bastille Day? The outmoded, or “a la mode,” theory (note the culinary reference) is that it refers to a storming of the Bastille prison in 1789. Wrong. “Bastille” is perhaps a French word for basting. Basting is a barbecue technique, barbecue being the keynote Fourth of July activity. The French are big-time foodies so it only makes sense they’d refer to the Fourth of July by way of culinary jargon. “Bastille the chops! Who wants freedom fries with their burger?”
Folklore says there is a HUGE military parade in Paris down the Champs-Elysees from the Arc de Triomphe. The documentation is sketchy about this. Pics or it didn’t happen. They might be confusing this with the big Halloween parade in New York City starting from the Washington Square Arch in Greenwich Village. Let’s chalk this one to simple Parisian envy.
At night there are fireworks off of the Eiffel Tower, or La Tour Eiffel. Anyone? This is a nod to the Tour de France bicycle race. We know that for years a prominent American was synonymous with the race so the fireworks celebrate all of the great Americans, so many great Americans. On both sides.
If you’re thinking these references are a stretch, know that it is in the French character to not hit things on the nose. Speaking of noses, even clowning is more low-key in France. Marcel Marceau did not have a big red clown nose like Bozo or Krusty or anyone else with orange hair.
A final point: The simple red, white and blue flags adorning France on Bastille Day have only three stripes and no stars!! Matisse took to his paper collage cut-outs and did a simplified reduction (another culinary term, so the scholarship stands up) of the American flag. Betsy Ross could have saved herself a lot of time, but she was not lazy.
So, bon appetite and happy – wink – “Bastille” Day!
Class dismissed.
