LETTER FROM PARIS: Vacation Fixation

...When the French finally get home at summer’s end, they find regulated prices for everything from bus tickets to utilities will have increased...

...What made last month so special was all the bridges, sometimes amounting to an actual aqueduct, as the legal holidays lined up perfectly...

...Do the math, as every Frenchman was quick to do as soon as the 2008 calendars were published, and you find that’s two four-day weekends if you build bridges by taking off intervening Fridays...

...All this means that as a conversational ice-breaker, you can’t go wrong by asking a Frenchman, any Frenchman, “How about that vacation...

...And it routinely reserves its most unpopular new measures for August, when no one is paying attention...

...Then there’s the generous six-month maternity leave...

...We’re talking about the priority of priorities, for which the French scrimp on their food—and wine—budget all year long: leisure, time off, holidays, long weekends, les vacances, quoi ! And May is when the French start getting in shape for the real thing in July and August...

...After all, if this vacation is over, can the next be far behind...

...Vacations trump everything, even ordinary sentiment and family ties...

...If this summer’s Olympics had events in hammock lying, beach lolling, chaise lounging, and three-hour lunching, the French competitors would be covered in gold...

...official statistics show the most frequent illnesses are “headache” and “fatigue...

...That, plus the President Nicolas Sarkozy, to his credit, is acutely aware of the problem...

...That, plus the predictable vacation-end blues, means the national mood sours in September...

...He might want to start with stoppages...

...Polls show that only 15 percent of the active population are interested in their work...

...As the illness dragged on, apprehension rose, as much over her worsening condition as over the harrowing possibility that it might continue all through summer, ruining cherished vacation plans...

...In one family I know, the aging matriarch was diagnosed with cancer in the spring...

...The grave was hardly closed when the family was happily on its way to a house in Provence...

...L e L e T T T T ee RR f f RR oo MM P a P a R I R I ss Vacation Fixation by Joseph A. Harriss No, you oenophiles, we’re not talking wine here, It was a very good month of may in France...

...Then came the ludicrous Although France’s leisure culture costs the 35-hour workweek, amounting to a three-day weekend every other week...

...Office and factory life will come to a standstill, most shops close, colleagues parting with a cheery, “Bonnes vacances...

...A third week came in 1956, a fourth in 1969, and President François Mitterrand made it five weeks in the 1980s...

...One lady I know, a high-school history teacher, has worked about four months in the last two years, with uninterrupted pay and perks, thanks to producing new French citizens...

...That left a minimum of five weeks’ paid vacation —many professions wangle seven or eight weeks—for the great summer exodus...

...The few stranded Parisians will join foreign tourists in the search for a breakfast croissant, the year’s absolute nadir of activity coming on the August 15 Assumption holiday (a Friday this year...

...In the public sector, where absenteeism can run 13 percent (vs...

...in September...

...Indeed, 2008 produced a vintage May to be remembered and savored in years to come...

...Now the French are officially the world champion vacationers, with an average of 37 workdays off a year, compared with 30 in Spain, 27 in Germany, 26 in Britain, and 14 in the U.S...

...French politicians of all stripes don’t have to be told that cutting back on constituents’ vacation time would be the quickest way out of office...

...So when the French finally get home at summer’s end, they find regulated prices for everything from bus tickets to utilities will have increased...

...It’s mostly forgotten here now, but the French used to be a hard-working people...

...That doesn’t mean he can do anything about it...

...You can debate whether the change is due to 70 years of French socialism, but except for the likes of those master craftsmen the Com pagnons and hardy small-business entrepreneurs, work today is a four-letter word...

...Came July 1 it opened the gas spigot and all those baying, banner-waving Trotskyites were suddenly off to the beaches...

...So far he has produced little more than a pledge to “rehabilitate” the work ethic, a slogan “work more to earn more,” and largely futile efforts to wean his compatriots off benefits...

...Sun and rainfall were in approximate balance, temperatures were moderate, with the usual exceptions for local conditions...

...Of course, they will also have had numerous bridges for All Saints’ Day, Christmas, New Year’s, and Easter...

...When Catholic priests exhorted them to slow down and devote more time to religion, they would answer, “But Father, to work is to pray...

...Joseph a. Harriss, an American writer in Paris, dashed this off between long weekends...

...2 percent in the U.S...

...Come July-August, nothing will deter the lemminglike migration, neither sky-high gasoline prices, nor hundreds of miles of sweltering, swerving traffic jams, nor yet the hordes of Belgians and Germans already packing Mediterranean beaches...

...Just consider: May 1, Labor Day, was a Thursday, as was the 8th, commemorating the end of the Second European War...

...During France’s intense heat wave of 2003, hundreds of suntanned families returned from the beach or mountains to find that abandoned elders had—sorry about that—helplessly suffocated in their apartments...

...His latest book is About France (iUniverse...

...economy billions and deters foreign investment by any company that values its productivity, not to mention the sanity of its personnel director, who has to juggle all the employees’ time off, the government does manage to leverage vacation mania to its advantage...

...Those of a different sexual persuasion are lobbying hard for equal family leisure under the law...

...During the anti-government riots and strikes of May-June 1968, for example, its most effective tactic was to cut off gasoline supplies for a while...

...A recent best-seller, Bonjour Paresse (“Hello Laziness”), gives tips on how to get away with doing the least possible on the job...

...These were followed by Whit-Monday on the 12th...

...A 32-year-old lesbian has written personally to Sarkozy to demand “paternity” leave following the birth of a little girl by her artificially inseminated partner...

...4 4 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R J u n e 2 0 0 8 J o s e P H a . H a R R I s s When she died in late June tears were mixed with palpable relief...

...Fmandated two weeks of paid time off as n e m n r e v o t n r a l u p o i l i c o n e h w rance t ’s h e v s aca a tio s n t P fixatio F n ro beg g an in 193 6 a t means the national mood sours predictable vacation-end blues, birthright...

...He will be just back from one or planning the next, and happy to talk about either or both...

...J u n e 2 0 0 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R 4 5...

...I’ve got a stoppage,” a Frenchman will announce gaily several times a year, meaning a complaisant doctor has certified that he or she needs time off for illness...

...but something far dearer to French hearts than mere fermented grape juice, which fewer than half of them drink anymore...

...All without taking a day of regular vacation time...

...Better yet, you could build a two-week holiday aqueduct, in local parlance, by starting on May 1, adding a bit of sick leave, paternity leave, or any of the other legally available time-offs, and going right through to the 13th...

...Every year thousands of dogs and cats, parakeets and goldfish are left to their fate despite government ad campaigns pleading, “Please don’t forget them...

...Fathers get 11 days paternity leave, recently up from one week...

...But not to worry, it quickly brightens again...