Today as I walked by a private school in our neighborhood, I noticed a boy about 13 being scolded loudly by a surveillante as she squirted the entire contents of a can of shaving cream into a garbage can.
It is the day of Sainte-Barbe. I had forgotten. On this day, it is the custom of kids, at least around here, to attack each other with shaving cream and flour after school. On the next block I took a quick photo of these boys running away from a flour ambush, and before the school, several older boys were standing around talking, each holding a suspicious-looking white bag behind his back.
I don't know the origins of this custom, but perhaps it derives in a distant way from the Provençale tradition of sowing a cotton wad with wheat on this day to see if the next year's harvest will be good.
My immediate thought was that it's a jeu de mots-- Sainte "Barbe"= beard, hence the shaving cream. Just the sort of thing 13 year old school boys would enjoy.
(btw, I very much enjoy your blog, Sedulia. I lived in Nancy for a while many, many years ago as a student, and part of my heart will always be in France)
Posted by: Doris | 05 December 2006 at 03:13
what a tradition! that seems like harmless fun though - too bad it was cut short for the boy you saw.
Posted by: Run Around Paris | 05 December 2006 at 03:43
In the region where I have my maison secondaire, there's a tradition of the "farinette". It began with a parade of all the newly-weds in their nightshirts, and the village blacksmith darting around attempting to blow the nightshirts upwards with his bellows. Then the tradition extended to filling the bellows with flour. Nowadays, if the tradition is obsevered at all, the entire village turns out in nightwear and a general flour-and-confetti fight ensues. Here's a photo I took in 1988.
Posted by: Sirrah | 05 December 2006 at 17:09